Participatory Research Methods for Health psychology: A crash course with coaching and collective learning.

Description:

PR describes methods that actively involve individuals with relevant lived experience within the research process. It involves collaboration between researchers and community members, recognising the value of non-academic expertise.

PR aligns with ethical and justice-focused principles, and can also produce more impactful research findings and interventions, with greater influence on policymaker decisions. However, guidance in health psychology differs across countries and contexts, and PR brings unique challenges and considerations to navigate.

Using recent, concrete examples of PR, attendees will explore PR’s theoretical underpinnings, learning how to systematically integrate principles and frameworks into their research. Attendees will be encouraged to bring examples from their own work, to be used in discussions and problem-solving sessions.

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The workshop will begin with presentations of the latest theories and principles followed by case-studies from the facilitators, who have experience in PR and coaching others in participatory methods. Much of the workshop will be spent in facilitated collaborative learning activities, where participants will have the opportunity to

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CANCELLED

Implementing communications training to support healthcare professionals in addressing vaccine hesitancy

Description:

Tailored solutions are urgently needed to tackle falling vaccination rates that threaten many immunisation programmes. Healthcare professionals (HCPs) play an important role in offering tailored vaccine communication, with patients often citing HCPs as a trusted source of vaccine information and counsel. However, many HCPs feel under-prepared to engage in these conversations, especially when vaccine discourse is hampered by misinformation that requires psychological skills to refute. This workshop will address solutions for preparing HCPs for vaccine conversations, under the conference track “communication with health professionals” and the UN sustainable goal of achieving “vaccines for all”.

The workshop will be facilitated by the JITSUVAX team, whose research found that HCPs desire training on how to dispel patients’ vaccine misconceptions while maintaining patient-provider relationships. We also found that a communication approach demonstrating empathy and alignment with patients’ psychological motivations for vaccine hesitancy achieves this better than a factual approach. However, converting research into practical training requires good contextual knowledge of national, regional, and local health systems and co-ordination with practitioners and health authorities. We aim to harness participants’ expertise and experiences from different health systems to co-create training implementation solutions.

Activities and Objectives:

The workshop will:

Intended participants (maximum 25):

Practitioners and academics with interests in immunisation and health communication.

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Expertise statement:

All convenors and facilitators are members of JITSUVAX, an EU-funded project that develops tools and training to support healthcare professionals in tackling vaccine misconceptions and address vaccine hesitancy. All of the team were involved in the development of the project’s “Empathetic Refutational Interview” training programme for healthcare professionals and have delivered this evidence-based training in trials in Germany and the UK. The research underpinning this training programme was led by the convenors.

Putting a good idea into practice: Using the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology

Rationale:

Advancing knowledge in health psychology can be hugely accelerated by more efficient organisation, accumulation, sharing and integration of knowledge. Ontologies enable more precise reporting, thereby improving intra- and interdisciplinary communication, replication of findings, evidence synthesis and theory development. After 6 years of development led by Susan Michie, 2024 sees the completion of the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology (BCIO) and tools for accessing, searching and visualising it.

Objectives:

Activities:

This workshop will present the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology (BCIO), a method of representing knowledge that enable precise description, interdisciplinary and cross-domain communication and sophisticated data analysis. It will focus on four of its component ontologies: the Behaviour Change Technique Ontology (BCTO), the Style of Delivery Ontology (SDO), the Human Behaviour Ontology (HBO), and the Mechanisms of Action Ontology (MAO).

The workshop will demonstrate and encourage hands-on practice of how to navigate the component ontologies, explore their content, and identify specific entities of interest. This will be in the context of research uses of the ontology e.g. for annotating research reports, synthesising evidence, designing interventions, writing research protocols and reports, and identifying research gaps.

Intended participants:

Anyone interested in systematic intervention reporting, evidence synthesis, and/or intervention design using the BCIO.

Maximum number of participants:

30

Convenors and Facilitators:

Facilitators:

Prof Johnston is co-investigator of the Human Behaviour-Change Project and a key developer of the Behaviour Change Intervention Ontology (BCIO). She conducts research on behaviour and behaviour change in the context of health, illness and healthcare with an emphasis on improving measurement, research design and reporting and developing implementable behaviour change interventions based on evidence and theory. She has over 500 publications and her research has been supported by research council, government and charitable sources.

An introduction to the multiphase optimisation strategy (MOST) and optimisation trials

Objectives:

After attending the workshop, we aim for participants to be able to:

Activities:

Using formal presentations, small group work, feedback, and large group discussion, we will use our experience and training in MOST to provide an introduction to its three phases. We will provide an overview of the range of experimental designs suitable for optimising different types of intervention. We will have a particular focus on designs within the family of factorial trials, including full factorials, fractional factorials, and sequential multiple assignment randomised trials (SMARTs), while also considering other possible designs (e.g. micro-randomised trials and hybrid experimental designs).

This workshop aligns closely with the following tracks: methodology, interventions in disease, health behaviour change interventions, and implementation & health services research.

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Maximum participants:

40

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How users can help improve your health interventions: a workshop on co-creation theory and methods

Background:

How can we release this potential of co-creation to make better user-aligned health interventions? In this workshop we provide you with an overview of theory, methods, and experiences of co-creation and will co-create, together with you, a systemic approach for co-creating health interventions.

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Niko Vegt holds a PhD in serious games and gamification and has co-creatively developed eHealth applications in the domains of neurology, obesity, and pediatrics. In his current postdoc positions at Erasmus University and TU Delft he works on the intersection of social sciences and design practice, investigating and developing co-creation methodology for teenagers in the PROTECt ME network and Child! What would you do? project.

David de Buisonjé has worked in health intervention development and research from a business, policy, and science perspective. In his postdoc at the department of Human Centered Design at TU Delft, David studies how to facilitate sustainable health behavior change through involving users in the design of digital products.

Facilitators:

Valentijn Visch is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft. He coordinates the Design for Health Motivation research group, is research representative for the Human Centered Design department, chairs the IDE eHealth research lab and is involved as researcher/project leader in several health-related transdisciplinary research projects including subjects like health for people in vulnerable positions, motivational health data interactions, and health ownership.

EHPS Open Science Special Interest Group ‘Hackathon’

Objectives:

Overview:

The goal of this Hackathon is to audit health psychology and behavioural medicine journals using the TOP guidelines (Transparency, Openness and Promotion). We will train people to apply the TOP factor, rate the journals and write the first paper draft within the workshop. A small amount of pre-reading will be required. Attendance is free.

Please note, for this workshop only, applications should be made directly to elaine.toomey@universityofgalway.ie. Spaces will be filled on a first come first served basis’.

Rationale:

Provisional Timetable*

*coffee/lunch times subject to change pending EHPS 2024 scheduling

Convenors:

Dr Elaine Toomey is a Lecturer in the University of Galway. Dr Toomey’s research focuses on behaviour change for chronic disease prevention/management, and enhancing the methods used for implementing health research into policy and practice. Dr Toomey is a keen advocate for open science and Co-Chair of the European Health Psychology Society’s Open Science Special Interest Group. She is also a Catalyst for the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) and a member of the Health Research Board Open Research National Steering Committee. Elaine was awarded a Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Open Social Science for Emerging Researchers from the University of California Berkeley and shortlisted for a Euroscience European Young Researcher Award (EYRA) finalist (2020) for her work in fidelity and transparency of behaviour change interventions.