WP1 held the first recruitment session of a public panel for PREPARE on 12th October at Chapter, a Community Arts Centre in Cardiff. A brief report is attached. 

The purpose of the panel is to have an engaged and trained group of patient and public representatives who can be called on to give feedback to researchers as required. Two members of the panel have already been involved in the development of a video explaining adaptive platform trials that will be used in PREPARE WP5. The panel will meet once a quarter to cover a range of topics, including:

• A closer look at the process of clinical research, research governance and PREPARE clinical studies 
• Debate about ethical issues related to participation in research during a flu pandemic  
• A practice exercise where we imagine the panel have been rapidly convened to provide feedback to study documents for a new PREPARE study being set up in outbreak mode. 
• Public messages regarding research participation

We will host another recruitment meeting at a local community event later this year to engage more panel members among diverse communities. While the panel is initially being set up in, we will make all materials available to other researchers in PREPARE who would like to set up similar groups locally. Anyone who is interested to learn more can contact Nina Gobat at GobatNH@cardiff.ac.uk  or Angela Watkins at WatkinsA6@cardiff.ac.uk. 

Read the notes here