Collaborative evaluation of a pilot involvement opportunity: Cochrane Common Mental Disorders Voice of Experience College

Background

Involving consumers in systematic reviews can make them more valuable and help achieve goals around transparency. Systematic reviews are technically complex and training can be needed to enable consumers to engage with them fully. The Cochrane Common Mental Disorders group sought to engage people with lived experience of mental health problems in the Voice of Experience College, three workshops introducing them to systematic review methods and to opportunities to contribute as Cochrane consumers. We aimed to collectively evaluate the College from the perspective of both facilitators and consumers, to critically reflect on the experience, and to identify how the College could be sustained and spread to other review groups.

Methods

This study was a longitudinal qualitative and collaborative evaluation, structured around normalisation process theory. Both facilitators and consumers were involved in not only providing their perspectives but also reflecting on these together to identify key learning points.

Results

The workshops were positively evaluated as being engaging and supportive, largely due to the relational skills of the facilitators, and their willingness to engage in joint or two-way learning. The College suffered from a lack of clarity over the role of consumers after the College itself, with a need for greater communication to check assumptions and clarify expectations. This was not achieved due to pandemic disruptions, which nevertheless demonstrated that resources for involvement were not prioritised as core business during this period.

Conclusions

Soft skills around communication and support are crucial to effective consumer engagement. Sustaining involvement requires sustained communication and opportunities to reflect together on opportunities and challenges. This requires committed resources to ensure involvement activity is prioritised. This is critical as negative experiences later in the involvement journey can undermine originally positive experiences if contributors are unclear as to what their involvement can lead to. Open discussions about this are necessary to avoid conflicting assumptions. The spread of the approach to other review groups could be achieved by flexibly adapting to group-specific resources and settings, but maintaining a core focus on collaborative relationships as the key mechanism of engagement.

Patient and Public Contribution

Public contributors were collaborators throughout the evaluation process and have co-authored the paper.     

Nanoparticle dermal absorption and toxicity: a review of the literature

Introduction  

Nanotechnologies are among the fastest growing areas of scientific research and have important applications in a wide variety of fields. The data suggest that in the future workers and consumers exposed to nanoparticles will significantly increase.     

How do healthcare consumers process and evaluate comparative healthcare information? A qualitative study using cognitive interviews

Background  

To date, online public healthcare reports have not been effectively used by consumers. Therefore, we qualitatively examined how healthcare consumers process and evaluate comparative healthcare information on the Internet.     

Takeaway food consumption and its associations with diet quality and abdominal obesity: a cross-sectional study of young adults

Background  

Few studies have investigated the associations of takeaway food consumption with overall diet quality and abdominal obesity. Young adults are high consumers of takeaway food so we aimed to examine these associations in a national study of young Australian adults.     

Impact of different food label formats on healthiness evaluation and food choice of consumers: a randomized-controlled study

Background  

Front of pack food labels or signpost labels are currently widely discussed as means to help consumers to make informed food choices. It is hoped that more informed food choices will result in an overall healthier diet. There is only limited evidence, as to which format of a food label is best understood by consumers, helps them best to differentiate between more or less healthy food and whether these changes in perceived healthiness result in changes of food choice.     

Effects of calorie labeling and value size pricing on fast food meal choices: Results from an experimental trial

Background  

Although point-of-purchase calorie labeling at restaurants has been proposed as a strategy for improving consumer food choices, a limited number of studies have evaluated this approach. Likewise, little research has been conducted to evaluate the influence of value size pricing on restaurant meal choices.     

"I am pregnant and my husband has diabetes. Is there a risk for my child?" A qualitative study of questions asked by email about the role of genetic susceptibility to diabetes

Background  

Diabetes Mellitus is a global health problem. Scientific knowledge on the genetics of diabetes is expanding and is more and more utilised in clinical practice and primary prevention strategies. Health consumers have become increasingly interested in genetic information. In the Netherlands, the National Genetic Research and Information Center provides online information about the genetics of diabetes and thereby offers website visitors the opportunity to ask a question per email. The current study aims at exploring people's need of (additional) information about the role of inheritance in diabetes. Results may help to tailor existing clinical and public (online) genetic information to the needs of an increasing population at risk for diabetes.     

Tanzanian farmers' knowledge and attitudes to GM biotechnology and the potential use of GM crops to provide improved levels of food security. A Qualitative Study

Background  

Genetically Modified (GM) crops have been championed as one possible method to improve food security and individual nutritional status in sub Saharan Africa. Understanding and acceptability of GM crop technology to farmers and consumers have not been assessed. We developed a qualitative research study involving farmers as both producers and consumers to gauge the understanding of GM crop technology, its acceptability, and identifying issues of concern.     

Where should Momma go? Current nursing home performance measurement strategies and a less ambitious approach

Background  

Nursing home performance measurement systems are practically ubiquitous. The vast majority of these systems aspire to rank order all nursing homes based on quantitative measures of quality. However, the ability of such systems to identify homes differing in quality is hampered by the multidimensional nature of nursing homes and their residents. As a result, the authors doubt the ability of many nursing home performance systems to truly help consumers differentiate among homes providing different levels of quality. We also argue that, for consumers, performance measurement models are better at identifying problem facilities than potentially good homes.     

A review of public opinion towards alcohol controls in Australia

Background  

Increasing concern about the negative impact of alcohol on the Australian community has renewed calls for tighter regulatory controls. This paper reviews levels of and trends in public support for liquor control regulations, regulation of alcohol promotions, and alcohol pricing and taxation reforms in Australia between 1998 and 2009.     

Very high plant stanol intake and serum plant stanols and non-cholesterol sterols

Background  

Today, consumers meet abundant supply of functional foods with plant stanol increments for serum cholesterol lowering purposes. However, efficacy and safety of plant stanols intake beyond 4 g/day have remained unexplored.     

Assessing the variety and pricing of selected foods in socioeconomically disparate districts of Berlin,Germany

Aim  

The neighbourhood environment appears to influence people’s food consumption. Access, variety and pricing of foods play a role in the socioeconomic difference of fruit and vegetable consumption. This study compared differences in the number of grocery stores, variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, and food prices in districts with different Social Indices (SI) in Berlin, Germany.     

Consumer input into health care: Time for a new active and comprehensive model of consumer involvement

Background

To ensure the provision of patient‐centred health care, it is essential that consumers are actively involved in the process of determining and implementing health‐care quality improvements. However, common strategies used to involve consumers in quality improvements, such as consumer membership on committees and collection of patient feedback via surveys, are ineffective and have a number of limitations, including: limited representativeness; tokenism; a lack of reliable and valid patient feedback data; infrequent assessment of patient feedback; delays in acquiring feedback; and how collected feedback is used to drive health‐care improvements.

Objectives

We propose a new active model of consumer engagement that aims to overcome these limitations. This model involves the following: (i) the development of a new measure of consumer perceptions; (ii) low cost and frequent electronic data collection of patient views of quality improvements; (iii) efficient feedback to the health‐care decision makers; and (iv) active involvement of consumers that fosters power to influence health system changes.     

Consumer perceptions of beef healthiness: results from a qualitative study in four European countries

Background  

Consumer perception of the healthiness of beef is an important determinant of beef consumption. However, little is known about how consumers perceive the healthiness of beef. The aim of this study is to shed light on the associations between beef and health.     

Are smokers rational addicts? Empirical evidence from the Indonesian Family Life Survey

Background  

Indonesia is one of the largest consumers of tobacco in the world, however there has been little work done on the economics addiction of tobacco. This study provides an empirical test of a rational addiction (henceforth RA) hypothesis of cigarette demand in Indonesia.     

Not all coping strategies are created equal: a mixed methods study exploring physicians' self reported coping strategies

Background  

Physicians experience workplace stress and draw on different coping strategies. The primary goal of this paper is to use interview data to explore physicians' self reported coping strategies. In addition, questionnaire data is utilized to explore the degree to which the coping strategies are used and are associated with feelings of emotional exhaustion, a key symptom of burnout.     

Developing evidence-based clinical practice guidelines in hospitals in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand: values, requirements and barriers

Background  

Evidence-based clinical practice guidelines support clinical decision-making by making recommendations to guide clinical practice. These recommendations are developed by integrating the expertise of a multidisciplinary group of clinicians with the perspectives of consumers and the best available research evidence. However studies have raised concerns about the quality of guideline development, and particularly the link between research and recommendations. The reasons why guideline developers are not following the established development methods are not clear.     

Front-of-pack nutrition label stimulates healthier product development: a quantitative analysis

Background  

In addition to helping consumers make healthier food choices, front-of-pack nutrition labels could encourage companies to reformulate existing products and develop new ones with a healthier product composition. This is the largest study to date to investigate the effect of a nutrition logo on the development of healthier products by food manufacturers.     

Segmentation of overweight Americans and opportunities for social marketing

Background  

The food industry uses market segmentation to target products toward specific groups of consumers with similar attitudinal, demographic, or lifestyle characteristics. Our aims were to identify distinguishable segments within the US overweight population to be targeted with messages and media aimed at moving Americans toward more healthy weights.     

Investigating organizational quality improvement systems,patient empowerment,organizational culture,professional involvement and the quality of care in European hospitals: the 'Deepening our Understanding of Quality Improvement in Europe (DUQuE)' project

Background  

Hospitals in European countries apply a wide range of quality improvement strategies. Knowledge of the effectiveness of these strategies, implemented as part of an overall hospital quality improvement system, is limited.