The People's Academy
Valuing citizens’ contribution to innovations in health and social careWho are we?
The People’s Academy is a committed and diverse group of advocates who refer to the patients as collaborators in their own care, rather than simply passive care recipients. In other words, a new partnership between citizens and professionals.
With the belief that patients play a central, active role in healthcare. The Academy aims to improve the quality of health and wellbeing, eliminate discrimination, involve the citizens in every aspect of the NHS and health policy decisions to benefit the people, the health professionals and the health and care system.
The People’s Academy is inspired by humanity, courage, commitment, and citizens who step up to enable changes in health and care.
Purpose
The People’s Academy aims to strengthen healthcare and to enrich people, health professionals and the health and care system, through partnership working, applied education, commitment and compassion, establishing the patients as active collaborators.
PA Member: “The People’s Academy is something to be proud of and it feels amazing to be part of it. What I enjoy the most is promoting healthcare by working with the community and the people with lived experiences whose knowledge proved to be invaluable.”
Our beliefs
Our beliefs, based on evidence, are that partnership working:
- Improves the health and well-being of individuals and populations
- Improves confidence, knowledge and self-care
- Brings new assets to improvement and innovation
- Improves quality and safety by focusing on what matters most to people
- Reduces the reliance of citizens on healthcare services
You can find out more about the People’s Academy by reading their manifesto here.
PA Member: “I find the People’s Academy to be very welcoming. I got first -hand experience with the students and being honest and open about my experience made me really appreciate the whole experience”.
What we do?
The People’s Academy gets involved in research projects, Lab enterprise work and Course Cluster Standing Group activities, which include course design, course validation, recruitment, evaluation and review and teaching.
Currently, the People’s Academy members are working directly with the academics as part of standing groups for each of the following divisions within the School of Health and Social Care:
- Midwifery PA Standing Group
- Adult Nursing PA Standing Group
- Children Nursing PA Standing Group
- Mental Health & Learning Disabilities PA Standing Group
- Advanced Practice & Non-medical prescribing PA Standing Group
- Social Work - Community and Public Health PA Standing Group
- Radiography & Operating department practice PA Standing Group
- Occupational Therapy PA Standing Group
- Physiotherapy, Sports rehab & chiropractic PA Standing Group
Rachel Picton, Dean of Allied and Community Health: “The course team involved in the course validation events was hugely professional, knowledgeable and honest in engaging with the panel. They were commended from the panel for their enthusiasm and for the quality of the paperwork and especially in terms of the service user input. I am really appreciative of all your hard work and very proud of you all”.
Patient and Public Involvement in Research
We believe in valuing citizens’ contributions to innovation is Health and Social Care. Patient and Public Involvement in research means work is done in collaboration with the public, not 'to', 'about' or 'for' them. This way, citizens’ are sharing power: they share decisions and responsibility, influencing and determining outcomes.
In other words, Patient and Public Involvement is: Involving people with lived experience to shape the study, not involving people as participants.
PPI in Health and Social Care research ensures
- Research questions matter to patients
- The research design in acceptable
- Researcher gains respect and good rapport with community
- The process of gaining consent is informative
- The Participant information sheet is clear and understandable
- The findings are going to be communicated to participants effectively
Patient, carer and public involvement in Covid recovery
This work was commissioned by the Joint Programme for Patient, Carer and Public Involvement in COVID Recovery, a partnership between Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT), including Evelina London Children's Hospital and Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals (RBH) and King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (KCH). The programme is funded over two years by Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charity and King’s College Hospital Charity to ensure the involvement of patients, carers, and the public in ongoing changes and the development of services necessitated by the COVID pandemic.
The programme is working with patients, carers, the public, and the People’s Academy to understand:
- shifts in public attitudes and behaviours toward accessing care in different parts of the healthcare system and the risk that patients and the public may retract from accessing the care they need now or in the future
- how changes made, or being made, continue to affect patients, their families and carers experiences’ of accessing care, using new or rapidly changing models of care
- variations in experience of care between different protected characteristics
- how we can improve and further develop services
As part of the programme’s activities, an extensive scoping, identification and prioritisation exercise was carried out to refine the focus of the programme. This resulted in the prioritisation of the following three projects:
- Virtual access to care
- Waiting for treatment and self-management
- Long COVID
London South Bank University’s Health Systems Innovation Lab and People’s Academy have supported the delivery of the three projects.
Click here to find out more about these projects. systems-innovation-lab/what-we-do/patient-carer-and-public-involvement-in-covid-recovery
Patient and public Involvement in PhD Funding
Our funding helps to give everyone an understanding of the benefits of engaging in participatory research, how to measure and ensure end-user impact, and how to ensure that the participatory research process if successful.
In the 2022-2023 academic year, we support up to four PhD projects with PPI funding. Some of the studies we are supporting are:
Exploring incivility within the Therapeutic Radiography clinical setting by Aneesa Admani
An exploration of the attitudes and beliefs about manual therapy held by patients experiencing low back pain by Mark Thomas
If you would like to collaborate with the People’s Academy on your project, please email rekaik@lsbu.ac.uk or healthlab@lsbu.ac.uk for information about applying to the funding scheme.
Partnerships
The People’s Academy is all about partnerships. We believe that where citizens work in partnership with health and care professionals everyone benefits. The Academy is proud to work with other partner organisations, such as:
- The Coproduction Collaborative at UCL
- Diabetes UK
- Local charities
Contact us
You can contact the People’s Academy by emailing at healthlab@lsbu.ac.uk ‘
In this section
- The People's Academy
- Information for practice assessors and supervisors