Working with The Hildas

If you are recruiting people into health-related research, whether paid or unpaid, you can share your opportunity on our ‘Research Participation Opportunities’ notice board so long as your research has ethical approval. The Hildas have access to this notice board and they can opt in to your research if they wish to. We will not email the group about or directly endorse your specific research opportunity; however, we will issue a general reminder to group members to check the notice board at the end of every PPIE meeting and in our newsletter which goes out quarterly. This prevents our team from having to manage communications and questions about research activities that we are not directly involved in.

To add your opportunity on to the ‘Research Participation Opportunities’ notice board please ensure you follow our guide. We will remove any posts that are not health research related, that are unsuitable, that are out of date or that represent spam.

The ‘Research Participation Opportunities’ notice board can be found here. The guide for creating a post can be found here.

Sometimes we are approached by university staff, community organisations, charities, artists, industry and others to see if The Hildas would be interested in attending or supporting non-research opportunities. This includes members of The Hildas who may wish to share events that they know about with each other.

Sometimes this is simply an invitation to attend a community event. Other times it may be a callout looking for people to give a talk or to otherwise support an activity through volunteering or in exchange for payment.

We do not offer use of the notice boards to promote events or activities that do not have a health focus. We will also not allow any fundraisers, any ticketed events that cost money for The Hildas to participate in and/or any selling of goods or services.

However, if your activity is free for The Hildas to attend and has a clear (ideally women’s) health focus you can post the activity on our ‘Non-Research Events and Opportunities’ notice board. The Hildas have access to this notice board and they can opt in if they wish to. We will not email the group about your specific event or opportunity, nor will we directly endorse it; however, we will issue a general reminder to group members to check the notice board at the end of every PPIE meeting and in our newsletter which goes out quarterly. This prevents our team from having to manage communications and questions about activities that we are not directly involved in.

The ‘Non-Research Events & Opportunities’ notice board can be found here. The guide for creating a post can be found here.

If you are running a PPIE activity and want us to share the opportunity with the group, we are happy to do this. Ideally, this should relate to women’s health research, however we recognise that women’s perspectives will of course be relevant to all sorts of other (human) health research projects. This includes clinical and biomedical studies naturally, but potentially also other research fields so long as the project itself relates to women’s health. PPIE opportunities such as training, networking and best practice events may be posted on this noticeboard.

You can post the activity on our ‘PPIE Involvement Opportunities’ notice board. The Hildas have access to this notice board and they can opt in to your PPIE opportunities if they wish to.

We define a paid PPIE opportunity as one which covers involvement time and sometimes also travel, accommodation, subsistence or access costs. An unpaid opportunity is one that does not cover involvement time, even if it covers other expenses. We normally anticipate that patient and public involvement payments should be £25 per hour per person or £75 per half day or £150 per full day. We recognise, however, that there will be some situations where there is no payment on offer (e.g. training and engagement events) or where the rate offered is lower or higher depending on funding available and the nature of the involvement responsibility. We simply ask that you clearly state the payment and conditions clearly, so that The Hildas can opt in or out as they wish.

We will not email the group about your specific PPIE opportunity, nor will be directly endorse it; however, we will issue a general reminder to group members to check the notice board at the end of our PPIE meetings and in our newsletter which goes out quarterly. This prevents our team from having to manage communications about PPIE activity we are not directly involved in. If our team are directly involved in the activity, we may email the group and/or highlight the activity as a featured opportunity in The Hildas newsletter where appropriate.

The ‘PPIE Involvement Opportunities’ notice board can be found here. The guide for creating a post can be found here.

If you are after specific PPIE support from The Hildas, rather than more general support open to anyone, then you should: 1) First read our Terms of Reference for Researchers (Terms of reference coming soon, please contact us in the meantime) and if you agree with these terms, then 2) Prepare a communication email that covers what the details requested in this What We Need To Know document 3) Email us on the contact email below and put ‘Request for Support’ in the title of your email.

Whether or not we can help you will depend on several factors which relate to the nature of your request, proposed mutual benefit to The Hildas, our staff time, lead times between the request and your deadline, sustainability of our group, funding that you may or may not have in place and, sometimes, good will – particularly in support of early career researchers who often lack funds for and experience in PPIE.

Contact

Dr Rachel McNeill and Dr Caroline Gillett

patientsandpublic@contacts.bham.ac.uk