Cornell hosts international Fuse conference with focus on community engagement

Nearly 100 people involved in public health from around the world made their way to Cornell University for the sixth Fuse International Conference on Knowledge Exchange in Public Health - the first to be held in the United States.

The conference hosted by the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, was an opportunity for scholars, policymakers, community-based organisations, and the public to come together and engage in discussions around public health research and how to engage the public in that research.

“The fact that this is an international conference means we get so many different points of view on public health research and community engagement,” said Amanda Purington Drake, lead organiser of the conference and director of ACT for Youth in the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research.

The conference included sessions that touched on public health research topics, including oral presentations, poster presentations, plenary panels, and group discussions in unique formats such as the “cabaret of dangerous ideas” and fishbowls.

There was a strong Fuse presence at the event (full list below), including presentations from Cassey Muir about co-producing a story book called ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Arti’ for children who experience parental substance use. Fuse Director Sheena Ramsay and Emma Adams also shared their experiences working with practitioners and policy-makers to support research with homeless people; and Fuse Associate Director Floor Christie-de Jong, spoke about working in partnership with men from Black African and Caribbean communities to raise awareness of the increased risk of prostate cancer.

The interactive posters featured presentations exploring how Fuse and the NIHR School for Public Health Research (SPHR) is cultivating collaborative engagement with public partners to enhance Public Involvement and Engagement; and how the public partner led podcast ‘Public Health Research and Me’ is being used to bridge the gap between public health research and the communities it seeks to benefit. We were delighted that Fuse public partners Victoria Bartle and Margaret Ogden were able to join us to co-present the posters.

Three keynote speakers highlighted the conference, each presenting a different approach on engaging the public in public health. Johanne Morne, the Executive Deputy Commissioner for the New York State Department of Health, kicked off the conference with a discussion on New York State’s efforts to engage the public on health issues including health care inequities and working in communities. Morne said not everyone has the same starting point or the same advantages, but everyone deserves an opportunity to get the best health outcomes. She urged authenticity when working in communities.

“Trust is huge,” she said. “Once you lose trust, it’s not impossible to get it back, but it takes a tremendous amount of work to get it back.”

Morne also touched on the importance of researchers understanding the lived experiences of people in communities.

“A lot of times researchers come into communities and are shocked by what they hear and don’t consider the level of trauma individuals may have, [and learning] the historic foundational premises of why people are where they are today.”

Jeremy Taylor OBE, director of public voice for the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), discussed the importance of diversity in the research workforce and the communities with which they partner. He said NIHR supports health research in the UK and other countries, all with diverse populations and the workforce needs to represent the communities they work with more closely, adding: “We are acutely aware that we need to do more to have people from other backgrounds in the research field.”

Mr Taylor spoke about the important role that NIHR plays in research dissemination and its efforts to make sure its research findings are accessible and easy to understand. He said: “We have a number of publication channels, we go to where our audiences are. We are thinking about how to incentivise dissemination of knowledge for those we fund.”

The final keynote address, from Subash Chandir, a founding director of IRD Global, focused on an effort to bring healthcare to underserved areas in Pakistan, through the Lady Heath Workers (LHW) programme. The programme trained women to be first point of contact for health services in these areas, by visiting households to provide basic services and suggest other available health services depending on need. While the program improved the health outcomes of people living in these underserved areas, the morale of workers was low. Many felt unappreciated, overworked, and underpaid, and harassment through gender discrimination was common.

To combat this, researchers retooled the LHW training using a humanities-based curriculum. With two groups in different areas of Pakistan, the training focused on creating a sense of purpose, an increased sense of self-worth and joy, and positioning the role as one of healer, commonly found in South Asian literature, as a way of establishing the LHW’s importance in the community.

The results were positive: sense of purpose increased, training attendance improved (98%), and LHWs were more engaged.

“No other training would have 98% attendance, no other training would have someone speaking three times every day,” Chandir said. “They would get up each day wanting to go to this training.”

History of the conference

This edition of the Fuse conference was the first to be held in the United States. Fuse partnered with Cornell University and Montclair State University the US, Tilburg and Erasmus Universities in the Netherlands, and the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East and North Cumbria (NENC) to deliver the sixth conference on the topic “The Promise of Engaging the Public in Public Health.” 

Fuse founded the International Conference on Knowledge Exchange in Public Health as part of its mission to deliver world-class public health research, build sustainable capacity, and build effective and lasting partnerships.

The first conference was held in April 2011 and attracted more than 150 delegates from all over the world to Durham in North East England.

A second event themed "How to get practice into science" was hosted in 2013 by Tranzo at Tilburg University in Holland, followed by a third UK conference in April 2016 on the theme of "Evidence to Impact in Public Health" hosted by Fuse in Newcastle-Gateshead.

The fourth conference in Vancouver, Canada in May 2018 was held in partnership with the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR). This explored the challenges encountered when using evidence, including conflicting evidence, in policy-making.

In 2022 the conference returned to North East England. Fuse partnered with the MSFHR in Canada, Cornell University in the USA, Tilburg and Erasmus Universities in the Netherlands, and the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East and North Cumbria (NENC) to deliver a fifth conference on the daring topic "Learning from setbacks and successes".

Full list of Fuse related posters and presentations

Oral presentations:

• Co-producing a story book for children who experience parental substance use: ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Arti’ By: Cassey Muir
• Leveraging partnerships with practitioners and policy makers to support action-oriented public health research in homeless populations By: Sheena Ramsay, Emma Adams, Neha Jain
• Engaging Peers in Public Health Research: Evaluation of Whole Systems Approach in the Management of Child Healthy Weight By: Murali Krishnan Perumbakkam Subramanian
• Creating supportive spaces and inclusive opportunities for co-producing research with people experiencing homelessness and other forms of disadvantage By: Emma Adams, Sheena Ramsay, Neha Jain
• How can we include infant voice in public health through ARTS (sAy fRom The Start)? By: Bronia Arnott, Arwa Katab, Ben Dickenson, Ian Robson
• I’ve Got to Make Sure That I’m Emotionally Well as Well: Use of I-Poems as a Reflective Device in a Peer Research Project on Men’s Health By: Shelina Visram, Mabel Lie, Richie Andrew, Neil Carter, Jonathan Lee, Matthew Williams
• The promise of community co-researchers in increasing public health research inclusivity and decreasing population health inequalities: What do we know from a PHIRST-Fusion, CHIL Consortia, and Blackpool HDRC collaborative project By: Bronia Arnott, Stacey Walker, Nai Rui Chng, Sandra Bee, Riley Bunce, Sharon Hird, Matthew Parker, Peter Craig, Hannah Maiden
• Lessons Learned from Involving Citizens in the Development of a Local Health and Wellbeing Strategy By: Shelina Visram, Mabel Lie, Mandy Cheetham, Philip Hodgeson, Anna Christie, Meg Logan, Joseph Jasperse
• Using a participatory approach to addressing barriers to early diagnosis of prostate cancer among Black men in the North-East of England and Scotland By: Floor Christie-de Jong, Olugbenga Samuel Oyeniyi, Lawrence Nnyanzi, Judith Eberhardt, John Kabuye, Martin Kalemba, Marie Kotzur, Kathryn A. Robb

Gallery spaces:

• The Voices of Stakeholders Within Free School Meal (FSM) Research By: Connie Dalton, Dr. Pamela L Graham, Dr. Richard Lee

Interactive posters:

• Reducing loneliness through culturally appropriate, faith-based activities in older Chinese and South Asian communities By: Zeb Sattar
• Cultivating Collaborative Engagement: A Journey towards Enhanced Public Involvement in UK Public Health Research with Fuse, the Centre for Translational Research By: Laura Ritson, Susan Carr, Ella Anderson
• Public Partners Take the Mic: Fuse’s “Research and Me” Podcast and its Promise for Public Engagement By: Mark Welford
• Fulfilling potential and keeping commitments: Exploring the “promises” for public involvement and engagement in the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) School for Public Health Research (SPHR) in England, UK By: Lesley Haley, Margaret Ogden

Fishbowl:

• Engaging the public in public health: What does it mean for our research? Reflecting on successes and failures from Tranzo and Fuse By: Ien van de Goor, Peter van der Graaf

Cabaret of dangerous ideas:

• Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement in research – Do we need an ‘ethical anchor’? By: Sophie Suri, Joanne Lally, Samantha Harrison, Alex Belvin-Nicholls, Felicity Shenton

Find out more about the sixth Fuse International Conference on Knowledge Exchange in Public Health.

Adapted with thanks to Juan Vazquez-Leddon, Cornell University

Last modified: Tue, 16 Jul 2024 14:50:33 BST