The History of INVOLVE: A witness seminar

The History of INVOLVE witness seminar grew out of a collaborative group process initiated by Bec Hanley and Derek Stewart to bring together former INVOLVE members, staff and wider stakeholders to discuss how to capture the history of INVOLVE so that the learning from this unique initiative in public involvement in research would be available to others. Four working groups were established, a witness seminar group, an eternal struggle group, a timeline group, and a publications group. The witness seminar work group planned and facilitated this seminar and became the editorial group for this report. INVOLVE and its predecessors played a central role in establishing the importance of public involvement in research, providing both a central focus for good practice and developing and disseminating a wide range of resources to support involvement. INVOLVE evolved through a number of institutional forms, and began life in 1996 as the Standing Advisory Group for Consumer Involvement in NHS R&D Programme. Witness seminars have been increasingly used to document important events or developments in recent history, in particular in the history of medicine and increasingly widely in contemporary social policy and politics. The origins of this witness seminar grew out of a collaborative group process initiated by Bec Hanley and Derek Stewart to bring together former INVOLVE members, staff and wider stakeholders to discuss how to capture the history of INVOLVE so that the learnings from this unique initiative in patient and public involvement in research would be available to others.