Event
Mark Sheehan, Ethox Centre and Uehiro Oxford Institute, University of Oxford
Funders across the United Kingdom now expect patient and public involvement in all research. Sheehan argues that the way to understand what involvement is for is to ask where it is not needed. Some cases arise from confusing involvement with ethics review, which asks whether a study is permissible rather than whether it is well designed for the people it affects. Others arise at the edges of the research enterprise: bench science, and abstract or theoretical work, where it is hard to say what involvement would contribute. Working through these cases yields a clearer account of the rationales for involvement in the cases where it does belong.
The talk also takes up two current shifts. The first concerns diversity and inclusion in involvement, which raises practical and philosophical questions about who is being included and on what basis. The second is terminological but consequential: the NIHR has replaced “patient and public involvement” with “community engagement and involvement”, a change that has caused disagreement and marks a further shift in how the activity is understood. Sheehan will also introduce his wider body of work on the ethics of involvement, and how he has built the involvement agenda in the medical sciences division at Oxford as an ethicist embedded in the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre.
Professor Mark Sheehan’s talk will last around 40 minutes, followed by a response and discussion with A/Prof Michael Dunn. Attendance is free, with registration required.
Mark Sheehan is Professor of Bioethics at the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford, and NIHR Biomedical Research Centre: Oxford Ethics Fellow. He works on research governance, public health ethics, and the justification of patient and public involvement, and advises the National Research Ethics Service and NICE.
Michael Dunn will respond. Michael Dunn is Associate Professor and Director of Education at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics, and an Associate Faculty member at the Ethox Centre, Oxford, where he worked for over a decade. His research integrates philosophical, legal, and qualitative methods, with particular attention to people at the margins of society and to the nature and purpose of bioethical inquiry.
Professor Mark Sheehan will deliver a second talk on PPIE titled “Who and how do PPI contributors represent?” on Friday 11 September. This talk will be internal to the Centre for Biomedical Ethics. See more details here.
