This action plan supports the Medical Research Council (MRC) Public Partnerships Strategy. It outlines the key actions for year two from July 2025 to June 2026.
Priority 1: make sure public partnerships are a key aspect of research culture throughout the MRC research community
We will:
- continue to talk to the MRC research and public involvement and engagement community about our aims and why public partnerships are important
- make one-off funding awards to universities to support pre-application public involvement in MRC research
- ensure the UKRI Funding Service supports the inclusion of public partnerships in MRC funding applications
- influence UKRI funding policy to ensure our funding systems and processes support public partnerships
- introduce public partnerships expert reviewers on MRC Centres of Research Excellence funding panels
- develop a pool of public partnerships reviewers for all MRC strategic funding opportunities
- monitor and review new MRC guidance on payment for public partners, ensuring alignment with other funders
- ensure the UKRI research outcomes tracker supports annual reporting of public partnerships activity in MRC-funded research
Priority 2: integrate public partnerships into leadership throughout the MRC research community
We will:
- work with research leaders to support them to understand, champion and reward public partnerships, with a focus on non-clinical research
- establish a task and finish group with public partners to guide our ways of working
- include public partners in the MRC institute review process
Priority 3: improve understanding of the differences that public partnerships make to non-clinical research
We will:
- work with MRC institutes and MRC Centres of Research Excellence to share and explore ideas on how to embed meaningful public partnerships into non-clinical research practice
- convene a meeting of Better Methods Better Research ‘public involvement in non-clinical health and biomedical research’ awardees to discuss progress
- continue our Public Partnerships in Research webinar series, working with public partners and research community on future topics
- review the evaluation report recommendations for our good practice case studies and plan implementation
Priority 4: diversify the range of people the MRC research community partners with
We will:
- influence how diversity information is collected for public partnerships activity across MRC head office
- produce a report on the diversity of our public partners
Priority 5: make health and biomedical research accessible to all and engage the next generation
We will:
- gather insight on the needs of our research community to enable sustainable co-development with public partners
- work with the MRC Strategy team, Public Partnerships Oversight Group and public partners to ensure public involvement in future opportunities to set MRC research priorities
- work with the MRC Policy Team to ensure public involvement influences policy development and evaluation
Priority 6: support and develop everyone working in public partnerships to promote continuous learning and sustainability
We will:
- support the development of a Community of Practice for non-clinical research with members of the public involvement and engagement community
- plan and run public partnerships session at the MRC conference in November 2025
- support MRC programme managers to increase their awareness and understanding of how to involve public partners in their work
- continue to contribute to, and pilot, UKRI staff development training for public engagement
Evaluation
We will:
- work with key stakeholders to co-develop success measures and a strategic evaluation plan