Introduction to PICE Work and Themes Within the Collection

This collection, ‘Public Involvement and Community Engagement in Applied
Health and Social Care Research: Critical Perspectives and Innovative Practice’,
has been conceptualised and designed to make YOU (the reader) think a
little deeper and differently about key concerns associated with the development
and delivery of Public Involvement and Community Engagement (PICE) Work.
Over the last two decades, PICE work has progressed from being an idea worthy
of consideration to a central feature and requirement of research practice. As
such, working together with members of the public and different communities
based on location, identity, experience, and interest is now recognised as vital
to the co-production of high-quality research, research design, and knowledge
exchange. PICE in research is now an assessed criteria within every UK, European
and Internationally based funding institution and authority. Interest in this
area is partly driven by the identification that PICE work is associated with better
engagement of the community in processes, relationships, decision-making,
intervention development, and implementation to achieve long-term and sustainable outcomes.
Additionally, there is recognition that co-producing research with
people who both use and provide services offers the potential to reduce stigma,
discrimination and inequality. When undertaken successfully, PICE is associated
with a multitude of personal, social, societal, and service-level benefits. Many
of the organisations and institutes seeking to build research capacity in
communities and commission PICE-informed research outline their expectations
for academics, practice partners, and researchers to consider when developing,
designing, implementing, and disseminating research. These organisations and
institutes also scrutinised themselves for their ability to do so. Those institutions
that govern professional and regulatory organisations also engage, to an extent,
with identifying ‘good PICE practice’ and aspects of innovation in PICE work.
Support and guidance around PICE work are readily available to new and
established researchers, and yet, within many contexts, there is often still a lack of
understanding about the more critical aspects of PICE, such as representation,
rights, co-production, tokenism, ethics, and sustainability. What is also often
missing is the voice of communities and organisations who are involved as
participants and their representations in relation to how they experience involvement
in research and PICE processes.