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Blizard Institute - Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
  1. Blizard Institute
  2. Research
  3. Centres
  4. Centre for Immunobiology
  5. Queen Mary and Barts Health Tuberculosis Centre
  6. Patient and Public Engagement

Patient and Public Engagement

We will establish a national group of people with lived experience of TB to:

  1. Facilitate person-to-person contact among TB survivors and individuals on treatment. This peer support will be invaluable in helping people with TB to understand and complete their treatment and deal with issues like pill burden, adverse drug reactions and paradoxical upgrading reactions that could otherwise lead to discontinuation of treatment with attendant risk of disease recurrence or emergence of antimicrobial resistance.
  2. Provision of a review service for TB researchers at a national level. This will involve reading and commenting on research proposals in development (especially plain language summaries) and patient-facing materials such as participant information sheets, consent forms and questionnaires. Such review is a minimum requirement of funders and research ethics committees.
  3. Raise awareness of TB and advocate for improved TB services. These activities will build on the TB Action Group’s existing track record of engagement with the public (via TB Alert: https://www.tbalert.org/), with academics and clinicians (via participation in meetings of the ‘UK Academics and Professionals to end TB’ group: https://www.ukaptb.org/) and with parliamentarians (via interactions with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Global TB: https://appg-tb.org.uk/). Our hope is that these activities will push TB up the political agenda and highlight the importance of tackling a disease that disproportionately affects under-served and marginalised communities to reduce health inequalities in the UK and internationally.

Additional public engagement activities will be conducted in collaboration with QMUL’s Centre of the Cell, which is an informal science learning centre based within the Blizard Institute that specialises in science and medical public engagement for all ages.  Their public offerings range from online videogames, presentations, hands-on interactive workshops, and a multimedia experience (STEM Pod), which combines film, projection mapping and interactive displays.

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