Public Engagement and Involvement
OVG engages and involves the public to support its work to fight diseases of major global importance.
We do this for a number of reasons:
- To increase and reinforce people’s understanding and acceptance of vaccines
- To increase people’s understanding about how vaccine-related research is carried out, in order to build trust in the safety and efficacy of vaccines
- To encourage greater, and more diverse, participation in our research.
We engage and involve the public in a number of different ways, both in-person and digitally.
Vaccine Knowledge
Vaccine Knowledge is a web platform about vaccines and infectious diseases that we have managed since 2011. It’s designed to help people make informed decisions about vaccines and provides clear, accurate and up to date information. Learn more about the project and team, or visit the website now.
Events to encourage research participation
A highlight of our public engagement work, in terms of sheer numbers of people reached, is the annual Oxford students’ freshers’ fairs at Brookes and the University. These see conversations with hundreds of students over the course of three days around vaccines, OVG’s research and how to volunteer to participate.
Festivals to inspire and educate
Oxfordshire hosts several high-profile science-orientated festivals annually, which aim too entertain, educate and inspire younger children around science. We regularly participate in the IF Festival of Science and Ideas and the Cheltenham Science Festival.
During these festivals, kids take part in a range of hands-on gaming and crafting activities that focus on increasing their understanding of infectious diseases, vaccines and clinical trials.
Vaccine workshops and outreach
We focus our engagement efforts around communities in Oxfordshire where there are lower levels of childhood vaccination, and from where we have drawn less study participants.
For example, we have run workshops in Banbury for women of Asian heritage, a parent and toddler group in Oxford’s Lye Valley, and at community health events in the Blackbird Leys, Rose Hill and Barton areas of Oxford.
At these events, we address concerns and questions around vaccines and let them know how they can get involved in vaccine research.
We also take part in workshops for secondary students, as part of our mission to educate around vaccines.
Patient and public involvement
OVG, along with Jenner Vaccine Trials, hosts a patient and public involvement group (PPI group). The group are members of the public and advise our researchers on different elements of their research, to help make it as acceptable and accessible as possible to everyone.
The group is made up of around 20 people, from a wide range of backgrounds. They are a mix of different ages, genders and ethnicities to reflect as far as possible the wider population.
The group provide their views and opinions on a number of elements of our work. For example, they provide feedback on all the materials that the general public may come across when we advertise and recruit volunteers for our research. This includes patient information sheets, recruitment advertising materials and consent forms.
We also sometimes ask for their views on different elements of a study’s design. This could include, for example, whether the proposed number of clinic visits, or number of times a person is deliberately infected (‘challenged’) with a pathogen, is acceptable.
If you are interested in helping to support our life-saving research in this way, please email OVC-PPI@medsci.ox.ac.uk to find out more about our PPI group.
We are particularly keen to hear from men, as you are under-represented at the moment.