‘Inspiring Stories’ with Lucy Smith

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‘Inspiring Stories’ with Lucy Smith

Dissemination Fellow, Big Data in Health Team, PPM

This is part of the Engaged Medicine ‘Inspiring Stories’ blog series. The blogs explore the stories behind outreach and patient-public engagement activities of staff and students from the University of Southampton’s Faculty of Medicine. 

My name is Dr Lucy Smith and I joined the Big Data in Health team which sits within the school of primary care, population sciences and medical education.  Our team specializes in taking a holistic approach towards understanding multiple long term conditions (MLTCs), and we use large data sets, alongside qualitative research to explore the social care needs of patients with MLTC, as well as a variety of other factors. We also use AI techniques and complex clustering analysis to identify population patterns in those with MLTC in relation to social care needs and social demographics. Our new phase of work is based on intervention development to target those most at risk of needing social care in the future, including digital app development and communication tools that health care professionals can use to discuss social needs with patients.

My role in the team is that of Dissemination Fellow, which means I am charged with creating opportunities for knowledge mobilization and policy development. At the same time, it is my role to engage with knowledge users throughout all aspects of the research development, to promote a co-production approach within our research designs. This means I have to have oversight of all the projects that our team is currently working on, so I can keep on top of opportunities to share our work.

I have been in post since June, and it has already been a very busy few months!  I started my role by focusing on 3 main objectives:

1. Create a group identify and branding
2. Develop a dissemination strategy which is shared with the team
3. Oversee the implementation of the strategy 

Firstly, our group identity including our vision and branding. I asked the team to consider who we are as a group, and why our work is important. For this, we created the following mission statement:

I created a logo for the group, and standardized templates which all the team use for study protocols, presentations, posters, lay summaries, social media tweets, videos and policy briefing documents. This helps to build cohesion in our team and helps us to become more recognizable as a group when we disseminate our work. If you want to create bespoke logos for your team, I highly recommend using CANVA – here is the logo I created, which the team all agreed to:

To create our dissemination strategy, I developed a road map to dissemination as a communication aid to develop my thinking with the whole team.

Following feedback from the team, I have created a strategy with three elements: 1) grassroots 2) growth 3) cross-pollination. At the grassroots level, our team considers dissemination from the moment we think about any new piece of research.  This means working with our PPIE contributors to develop the research question and study design. As well as this, we consider the policy implications of the proposed study and carry out policy mapping work to identify all the relevant stakeholders whom we may wish to be involved in our research. To support our ‘grassroots’ work I am working with local community groups and charities to create our own PPIE group, who are invited to be involved in our research grants. We currently have 20 members with MLTC, from across a diverse social demographic. We are aiming to reach patients from underserved communities since there is an inverse relationship between disease burden for this group and research involvement. I have been able to gain feedback on research proposals to this group, and many have agreed to be PPIE research collaborators on our recent grant proposals.

To develop ‘growth’, throughout the course of the research journey I support members of my team to connect with relevant networks about their research, for example, through abstract submissions to conferences, letting the department know what we are doing through regularly updating the faculty newsletter, and attending relevant seminars/workshops to continue to make connections and share the message of our research. To do this, I have a dissemination slot in our weekly team meeting where I assess need and share relevant opportunities. Where the team member has limited capacity, I attend events on their behalf and continue to make connections which promote our work and potentially lead to future collaborations. For example, I recently attended the NAPCRG primary care conference in Canada and specifically attended presentations and workshops aligned with our team mission statement, this culminated in me joining a new working party focusing on social determinants of health, and we hope to carry out shared international initiatives.

Cross pollination refers to what many may see as traditional dissemination work – getting the message of our published research out to the wider research community, invested stakeholders, media and policy makers. I have built relationships with the university media team which means I can share potential publications before they come out, to give the media team the opportunity to take on our story and promote it. We also have an excellent public partnerships and communication team within the department who have provided amazing advice and support, helping me organize two previous dissemination events which were very well attended.

I have quickly realized that the key to successful dissemination is building positive relationships with those around you. Networking is essential, and I spent a lot of time when I was first in post contacting as many people in the university who were involved in public engagement and research communication, as well as local charities who were involved with the MLTC community. I attend as many networking events as possible, and have joined many interdisciplinary mailing lists, culminating in several emails a day advertising different seminar opportunities, which I do my best to attend to support our cross-pollination strategy.

I truly believe that dissemination should not be seen as an aside to the research process – it must go hand in hand. Afterall, what use is the research if it 1) doesn’t reflect the actual needs of the knowledge users and 2) remains in the pages of an academic journal? To create meaningful health behaviour change, knowledge mobilization is key, and I feel incredibly empowered that my role is specifically centered on driving this forward.

Stay Connected! To find out more about the ‘Inspiring Stories’ series, Faculty of Medicine educational programmes and research, or to get involved use the links below or contact Prof Lucy Green. 

University staff or students click here for the Engaged Medicine SharePoint.