A new version of the ICPHR Position Paper #1 has been recently published in Portuguese titled "O QUE É A PESQUISA-AÇÃO PARTICIPATIVA EM SAÚDE". This new position paper is available for download under our Resources page. 

Dear ICPHR members and friends,
 
I have been thinking about ways we can capitalise on work each of us is already doing in building a strong evidence base in all areas of PHR. One area that often goes underappreciated is the richness of work our graduate students do in preparing literature reviews for their masters and doctoral theses.
 
These reviews often go unpublished, despite being valuable syntheses of the knowledge in each specialised corner of the PHR world where the student’s research is focussed.
 
We would like, therefore, to give you and your students the opportunity to publish thesis lit review chapters on the ICPHR website. This would archive and make them publicly available, while building a categorised database of valuable knowledge.  THE REVIEWS CAN BE IN ANY LANGUAGE!
 
We are looking for lit reviews/syntheses that specifically pertain to the participatory process. I.e., not the general review on the thesis topic such as “the state of the literature in home care nursing,” but yes to “the use of participatory engagement methods in improving home care nursing.” So this might be a portion of the overall review.
 
Once published on the ICPHR website, you and your students would retain copyright and would be free to submit your reviews to journals for publication. Many major journals (such as Milbank Quarterly, for example) allow you to leave the original pre-submission version of your work on the website, as long as you direct the readers to the final published version as well. Otherwise you are always free to remove the review from the ICPHR site and later replace it with the final published version.
 
If you are interested in pursuing this, please feel free to contact me (jon.salsberg@ul.ie) or simply send on your lit review section for posting.
 
Many thanks!
 
Jon Salsberg

Our hosts in Edmonton, Alberta have put together a detailed information guide to help you prepare for your travel and stay in Edmonton.

​Please visit the AWM 18 Edmonton conference page for additional information on the venue, travelling to Edmonton, inner-city transportation, accommodation and much more!

The ICPHR is excited to be partnering with the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology as part of their Thinking Qualitatively Workshop Series for a unique one day special conference on participatory health research on Wednesday June 20th, 2018. The ICPHR AWM will follow. 

Abstract submission opens on January 11th, 2018! Please visit the pre-conference page for more information and updates. 

The 2017 AWM Meeting Minutes are now posted. Please visit the AWM 2017 page to view the summary of our meeting in Limerick. 

We have also update the ICPHR Project Groups page with new projects that are underway by members of the ICPHR. Please visit the Project Page group, if you are interested in supporting any of the projects please contact the project lead (email is posted). 

A new Organizational Participatory Research Practice Guide co-produced by ICPHR member Paula L. Bush from Participatory Research at McGill (PRAM) is now available for download. 

Please see the newly published article below on Organizational Participatory Research by a few ICPHR members:

Bush, P. L., Pluye, P., Loignon, C., Granikov, V., Wright, M. T., Pelletier, J. F., ... & Repchinsky, C. (2017). Organizational participatory research: a systematic mixed studies review exposing its extra benefits and the key factors associated with them. Implementation Science, 12(1), 119.

Abstract:
Background
In health, organizational participatory research (OPR) refers to health organization members participating in research decisions, with university researchers, throughout a study. This non-academic partner contribution to the research may take the form of consultation or co-construction. A drawback of OPR is that it requires more time from all those involved, compared to non-participatory research approaches; thus, understanding the added value of OPR, if any, is important. Thus, we sought to assess whether the OPR approach leads to benefits beyond what could be achieved through traditional research.

Methods
We identified, selected, and appraised OPR health literature, and at each stage, two team members independently reviewed and coded the literature. We used quantitative content analysis to transform textual data into reliable numerical codes and conducted a logistic regression to test the hypothesis that a co-construction type OPR study yields extra benefits with a greater likelihood than consultation-type OPR studies.

Results
From 8873 abstracts and 992 full text papers, we distilled a sample of 107 OPR studies. We found no difference between the type of organization members’ participation and the likelihood of exhibiting an extra benefit. However, the likelihood of an OPR study exhibiting at least one extra benefit is quadrupled when the impetus for the study comes from the organization, rather than the university researcher(s), or the organization and the university researcher(s) together (OR = 4.11, CI = 1.12–14.01). We also defined five types of extra benefits.

Conclusions
This review describes the types of extra benefits OPR can yield and suggests these benefits may occur if the organization initiates the OPR. Further, this review exposes a need for OPR authors to more clearly describe the type of non-academic partner participation in key research decisions throughout the study. Detailed descriptions will benefit others conducting OPR and allow for a re-examination of the relationship between participation and extra benefits in future reviews.

The third quarter newsletter is now posted!  Click here to subscribe and received email updates direct to your inbox!

The 9th Annual Working Meeting will take place at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada from 9am, 21 Thursday to 2pm, 23 June (Thurs.-Sat.).  On Wednesday 20 June there will be a pre-conference together with the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology (based at the University of Alberta on participatory research and qualitative methods.  More information will be made updated on the 2018 conference page.

Photo credit: City of Edmonton