Every year the HRA's public involvement team analyse a sample of studies receiving a favourable opinion from a Research Ethics Committee (REC) to see if more or fewer research teams report that they have, or plan to, involve the public.
Our most recent analysis showed that levels reported in applications from 2025 were the same as in 2024.
However, there have been changes in levels of public involvement depending on the type of study and the kind of sponsor.
Researchers have reviewed 1,000 articles from 10 general medical journals during a 25 year period to look at trends in reporting patient and public involvement.
In these journals, reporting of public involvement increased from 0% in 2000 to 38% in 2024. Across the 25 year period, reporting of involvement was more common in adult journals (13%) than in paediatric journals (7%).
The full article, 'Trends in patient and public involvement in health research 2000-2026' was published this month in the Research Involvement and Engagement journal.
Authors also noted that:
- studies reporting public involvement were more likely to have an experimental design and be in a community setting, and less likely to be multi-country
- the British Medical Journal, which introduced mandatory reporting of patient and public involvement in 2015, had the highest prevalence of articles reporting public involvement
We've published a new blog, Acting on feedback: improving our services and ways of working, which shares how feedback from people who work with and support the HRA is helping us improve our services and the way we work.
You provide invaluable perspectives that help shape our work, and the blog highlights our commitment to listening to feedback, learning from your experiences and making meaningful improvements.
Thank you for everything you do to support the HRA and help us improve.
The Royal Society has published a report 'Science for society: How society and science shape each other'. The report recognises the enthusiasm for public engagement in science. But the report's authors reflect that the UK research community does not have the stability, time, skills, confidence, protections, or money to do engagement as well as they'd like to.
Calling for public engagement to be recognised as a vital part of research, teaching and learning - not an extra - the report sets out 20 recommendations for funders, governments, businesses and others in the scientific community.
Recommendations include advocating for increased institutional and funding support for public engagement, particularly early upstream engagement; and strengthening the long-term institutional commitment to public engagement.
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