Public Involvement in the Evaluation of Local Government Public Health Interventions in the UK: Lessons From PHIRST Insight

INTRODUCTION: The value of public involvement in research is increasingly recognised, bringing specific lived experience to inform research from the outset. Despite known benefits, barriers to meaningful public involvement remain and further studies are needed to understand how it can be embedded throughout public health research evaluations across diverse contexts. AIM: To understand how public involvement has been embedded across 10 evaluations of local government public health initiatives. METHODS: This study focuses on public involvement in 10 studies of local government public health interventions undertaken by an academic team funded through the NIHR PHIRST scheme. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three groups: public partners (n = 12), local government partners (n = 13) and members of the academic research team (n = 12), to share their experiences and reflections on embedding public involvement within this research context. RESULTS: Several challenges to embedding public involvement were identified including studies' geographical locations, tight timelines, clarifying the role and expectations of public contributors, as well as the provision of training and support. Participants also noted how practices had developed over the 5-year funding period. All participant groups highlighted the positive impact of public involvement, not only on individual studies, but also the reciprocal benefits to public partners and changes to longer-term practices within local governments. However, awareness of the impact of public involvement could be improved by more formalised recording and feedback mechanisms. CONCLUSION: Our findings reinforce the importance of continued reflection, resource investment and structured processes to ensure meaningful public involvement is implemented, developed, evaluated and sustained over time. PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: Our public partners, Christina Stokes, Sian Harding, Rashmi Kumar and Barbara Harrington, made significant contributions to the study design and data collection materials (developing and refining the topic guides) developed for this study.