Engaging the public in setting strategy for research into Basic Bioscience Underpinning Health

BBSRC commissioned Ipsos to conduct a general public workshop to explore what “healthy” means to people and explore their views on the challenges to health facing our society. The workshop involved encouraging participants to come to a consensus view on which types of research into basic bioscience underpinning health (BBUH) the BBSRC should prioritise for funding. Ipsos worked closely with BBSRC to design innovative stimulus showcards to be used during the day to explain the kinds of research that BBSRC funds.The findings are being used now to inform BBSRC’s work around refreshing their strategic plan.

• Five key aspects of personal health were identified: mental health and happiness, good diet, exercising, freedom from illness or managing ongoing illness and maintaining health through life.
• The key health challenges for society were thought to be meeting the health needs of people at all of the different stages in their lives, preventing and curing disease, understanding genetic inheritance and the effects of the environment on the individual, and understanding the causes of unhealthy behaviours or addictions.
• It was agreed that BBSRC could help society meet its major health challenges by focussing its attention on several areas: gaining a better understanding of how health is maintained, how diseases are caused and how environmental and lifestyle and genetic factors impact on health.
• The values of participants and the themes that participants wanted BBSRC to take into account when priority-setting included: flexibility in strategy, building on research in other countries, pragmatism in funding research with the greatest potential, ensuring that fairness and equality of potential health outcomes are always considered when making funding decisions, research on health issues that affect all ages, and a focus on understanding healthiness and helping to ensure that all people are equipped with the tools to live a healthy lifestyle.

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) is a UK Research Council and NDPB and is the largest UK public funder of non-medical bioscience. It predominantly funds scientific research institutes and university research departments in the UK.

A deliberative method was considered the optimal approach to allow participants to explore these complex issues. It is particularly useful when participants are unfamiliar with a topic, in this case the detail of how basic bioscience research might lead to different health outcomes in the future. As a result, some of the workshop time was dedicated to informing the participants about the BBSRCs work and discussing case studies that highlighted projects that the BBSRC have funded through their basic bioscience underpinning health (BBUH) strand.

These discussions allowed participants to give their top of mind views on health and health challenges, before having a more informed discussion around strategy for the BBSRC.