We want to ensure that health and social care research is done with and for everyone. Our strategy, ‘Making it easy to do research that people can trust’, sets out our ambitions:
- to make better decisions by working with a diverse group of people with a range of lived experiences
- to make sure that anyone who wants to get involved in research, is able to do so
Our Community Committee helps us to do this.
Who is the HRA Community?
Around 1,000 dedicated and committed people give their time to support the HRA's work. They make up our:
- Research Ethics Committees (REC)
- Confidentiality Advisory Group (CAG)
- Public Involvement Network (PIN)
Their efforts support health and social care research, and make an invaluable contribution to our vision, which is for high-quality health and social care research today, which improves everyone’s health and wellbeing tomorrow.
What is the HRA Community Committee?
We have recently formed an HRA Community Committee with 11 members from across our community. The Committee is now part of our governance structure and will advise the HRA Board both on how we operate in practice and our bigger strategic ambitions.
The Community Committee has been set up in response to feedback from the HRA Community Insight Group. The Group provides ongoing feedback from individual community members, discusses ideas for how we can improve their experiences, and seeks early reactions to relevant policy or service changes that will affect members of our community.
They also suggested that we needed to do more, so we worked together to develop proposals to better involve our community members in our decision making and asked for your views on the best way to do this. You can read more about the consultation on changes to the HRA Community Insight Group, and what you told us, on our website.
The Community Committee will be chaired by Andrew George, who is a non-executive director of the HRA, and sits on our Board. He provides a direct link between the Committee and the HRA Board.
Because this is a completely new Committee, one of its first jobs will be to shape how it works in practice and we are really looking forward to working with its new members to do this.
The Community Committee Terms of Reference outlines the structure, responsibilities, and expectations for members of the HRA Community Committee.
Agendas and notes
We will share the agendas and notes taken at all of our Community Committee meetings.
You can view the agendas and notes below:
Blogs
We are sharing blogs by members of our Community Committee, with reflections on the meetings.
Read a blog by Jan Speechley about the March 2024 meeting.