Stakeholder Skill Training in Participatory Health Research: Themes and Topics for Future Research

Participatory health research requires the active involvement of diverse, multidisciplinary stakeholders from patients to health professionals. These stakeholders are often required to attain new research skills to actively participate, while researchers themselves must prove equally capable of gaining new skills and knowledge from practice. Stakeholder skill training (SST) is therefore an essential component of participatory health research. Yet little consensus exists regarding how to prepare and conduct SST. We sought to explore and clarify this activity by conducting a one-day workshop involving human computer interaction (HCI) - and health researchers of many and varied experience levels. In this article, we draw on insights gained through the conversations and activities of this workshop; to briefly outline what SST currently and most often looks like, to draw readers’ attention to five key themes that were identified during this workshop, and to raise important questions for anybody preparing SST or wishing to learn more about it. This includes the value of attending to considerations spanning the ‘choice of the word training’, ‘hierarchy, power and culture’, ‘mutual learning’, ‘common language’, and ‘inclusivity’. We close the paper with suggestions for future research and collective reflection on the topic and promise of SST.