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Event Description

A PhD thesis proposal review on exploring consumer engagement in research about people with chronic conditions.

Abstract

Engaging consumers, including patients, carers and service users who have unique experience of illness and health care, in health research is considered as essential to achieving high-quality and patient-centred research outputs, as their lived experience can contribute to improving the relevance and accountability of the research. This has been recognised by research institutions, funding agencies and government authorities internationally, particularly in high-income countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States of America, and Australia. However, many researchers lack a clear understanding about how consumers prefer to be engaged, how they can best engage with consumers, and what resources can be used to support this process. I aim to answer these questions through conducting: 1) a scoping review of the literature to identify existing consumer engagement resources, 2) a longitudinal qualitative case study to examine the enactment of consumer engagement in research about people with chronic conditions, including the use of resources to support this, and 3) a mixed methods study engaging with industry (Research Australia) to explore current consumer remuneration practices in Australia. 

Speaker Biography

Mingming Zhou is a PhD candidate at the Department of Health, Economics, Wellbeing and Society, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. Mingming is supervised by Associate Professor Jane Desborough, Dr Anne Parkinson, and Dr Julia Dray. Her PhD research is embedded in a larger ARC DECRA funded project, The Real Price of Health: Experiences of Out-of-Pocket Costs in Australia, led by Ass/Prof Desborough. It is also supported by Our Health in Our Hands, a strategic initiative of the ANU.

Prior to her candidature, Mingming has worked in a provincial tertiary hospital in China. Her roles included Deputy Director of the Health Management Centre, as an administrator, and as a pharmacist in the hospital’s Pharmacy Department. Mingming was awarded the Master of Public Health (Advanced) from ANU in 2018. Her master’s thesis was a scoping review of pharmacist prescribing in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and published in International Journal of Pharmacy Practice in 2019.