Engagement Webinar

Community engagement and participation are big buzzwords in health research these days. But communities, especially those considered disadvantaged and marginalised, rarely have a say in the agendas and priorities of the very health research projects that aim to help them. Typically, these agendas are defined by a funding call or by researchers well before community members are engaged. And even where their engagement occurs, without attention to power dynamics, it can lead to tokenism: presence without voice and voice without influence.

To help address this issue, Dr Bridget Pratt developed an ethical toolkit for Sharing Power with Communities in Priority-Setting for Health Research Projects. The toolkit aims to help academic researchers and community partners design priority-setting processes that will make the health needs and knowledge of communities, particularly those considered disadvantaged and marginalised, more visible in health research projects’ topics and questions. It is a reflective project planning aid for use before priority-setting is undertaken for a health research project. This webinar will introduce the toolkit through a conversation between Bridget and Siew Fang.

Presenters
Dr Bridget Pratt (ethics researcher at the School of Population and Global Health)

Dr Siew Fang Law (Senior Lecturer and Engagement Lead at the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education)