More about the next generation advisory panel

The next generation advisory panel is a representative group that ensures that the views and interests of early-career healthcare professionals are represented throughout the planning and delivery of our International Forums in Quality and Safety in Healthcare.

The panel plays a pivotal role in providing support and advice during our planning meetings, and critically, providing a strategic direction for achieving greater representation of early career healthcare professionals during Forums, an essential part of our growing community.

In December 2022, the inaugural BMJ Research Forum brought together 300 participants at the British Medical Association in London, UK. It was there that they were introduced to the  Sandpit Methodology: a structured, intensive, multi-day collaborative workshop approach for generating interdisciplinary research ideas.

One attendee from UCLPartners adopted the approach and applied it within the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; an organisation that manages 17 hospitals delivering care to more than six million patients.

The ongoing success of this project illustrates how a single, well designed collaborative method can catalyse meaningful change when implemented at scale within a healthcare system.

At the BMJ Research Forum 2022, attendees had the privilege of hearing Dr Katherine Freeman from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) deliver a thought-provoking presentation on the Sandpit Methodology for awarding research grants.

This innovative approach helps to unleash free thinking and inspire interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle significant challenges.

Among the attendees was the Chief Executive Officer of UCLPartners, Dr Dominique Allwood MBE, who was inspired by the potential of the Sandpit Methodology to encourage collaboration and co-production. Determined to bring about change, she took the concept back to UCLP and applied it to their Climate Collaborative initiative, developed to implement the NHS Green Plan across their hospitals.

“BMJ Group’s global reach and convening power enable meaningful knowledge exchange by bringing together diverse leaders and specialists, amplifying important voices, and sharing insights that inspire action across disciplines and borders.”

Dr Dominique Allwood MBE
CEO of Imperial College Health Partners, Director of Population Health at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and an Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London 

In the hospitals of the Northern Territory state of Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience poorer outcomes and higher rates of self-discharge than non-Indigenous patients. These disparities reflect the ongoing effects of colonisation, structural racism and communication barriers within health systems.*  

The Communicate study was established as a multi-level partnership between Menzies School of Health Research, NT Health, the NT Aboriginal Interpreter Service, National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters, the Djalkiri Foundation, and First Nations leaders, working across Royal Darwin Hospital, Gove District Hospital, Katherine Hospital and Alice Springs Hospital.

It was developed to address the impacts of colonisation and systemic barriers in Northern Territory hospitals, where most patients are Aboriginal, but most staff are non-Aboriginal.

The team at NT Health work to achieve the best health and wellbeing for all Territorians through the development, management and performance of the public health system.

Co-designed with Aboriginal partners, Communicate makes hospital care more culturally safe and accessible through culturally and linguistically appropriate communication, as determined by Aboriginal patients and communities themselves.

It does this by focusing on practical changes in everyday care. Cultural safety training is delivered through Ask the Specialist: stories to inspire better care, using podcasts led by Aboriginal people from Larrakia, Tiwi and Yolŋu nations, reflecting the languages, cultures and lived experiences of communities served by Northern Territory Health hospitals.

A cross-site community of practice links clinicians across Royal Darwin Hospital, Katherine Hospital, Gove District Hospital and Alice Springs Hospital to support continuous quality improvement. Additionally, Aboriginal language interpreters are embedded into clinical teams to support shared understanding and informed decision making. 

 From international evidence to local system change in remote and Indigenous health services

Fiona Wake, executive director for clinical excellence and patient safety, commissioning and system improvement at Northern Territory Health, believes that the learnings gained from attending the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare were associated with refinement and scaling of the work. Exposure to international evidence and peer systems where consumers define quality and accountability was consistent with international evidence and comparable models, and supported its expansion across multiple sites. 

Sessions led by consumer advocates challenged traditional reporting frameworks that prioritise organisational metrics over patient experience, leading to greater emphasis on patient-defined indicators such as cultural safety, interpreter use and self-discharge. Comparable community governed models from Broome, Alaska and Canada demonstrated the applicability of these approaches for remote and Indigenous health services.

The early success of the Communicate study shows that effective change happens when Aboriginal patients and communities help shape how care is delivered, rather than commenting on it as an afterthought. It places Aboriginal voices at the centre of decisions about safe, effective care.

This view mirrors the discussions that took place at the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare in Canberra 2025, which emphasised the role of patient-defined measures in assessing and improving care quality. 

The Queensland Clinical Senate is an advisory body for Queensland Health that brings clinicians together to examine how the health system is working in practice. At the Adolescent to Young Adult Care: Doing Better meeting in December 2020, clinicians were clear that the system was falling short in terms of adolescent and young adult care. The Senate called for a co-designed strategy to address these gaps and improve care.

In response, Brianna McCoola, principal project officer for adolescents and young adults with the Queensland Child and Youth Clinical Network, led a nine-month co-designed process to close this gap.

McCoola and colleagues’ BMJ Open Quality article, “Co-designing recommendations to improve adolescent and young adult healthcare in Queensland”, documents the methodology and thematic analysis of consultations with clinicians, health professionals, leaders, non-government organisations, young people, and families.

McCoola explains that clinicians were “really worried about the safety of care for young people”, noting that most had “no dedicated training in youth healthcare” and that 15 to 17-year-olds often received care in adult services.

 Young people also reported that they often did not “feel believed, heard, [or] understood”.

Attending the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare over several years shaped both the development of the manuscript and McCoola’s confidence to publish it. She described her first Forum as the point at which hearing presentations “made it crystal clear to me as a clinician” that quality and safety offered the correct framing for a system-wide response to youth care. 

Successive Forums also supported her professional progression. After presenting a poster and then partaking in the closing plenary in Brisbane in 2024, she said the experience “helped me realise the calibre of what we did and what we produced”. Presenting the next phase of her work, subsequent to the strategy, in Canberra in 2025, co-designing a practice guide with young people showed her how the findings may be taken up beyond Queensland. In the post-presentation discussion, she recognised that “there were people in the room that might pick this up and use this in their clinical spaces”, which demonstrated to McCoola how the work is transferable across healthcare settings.

The Forum also provided evidence of its influence in practice. Hearing that colleagues had already seen and used her co-designed resources “has really inspired me to think about what can continue to be done as next steps”, and has shaped the direction she intends to take in her future policy work.

McCoola’s current focus is to “improve Queensland’s health response in the Youth Justice sector”, carrying forward the principles developed through the original study.

What is already known on this topic

Developing health service improvement initiatives, underpinned by co-design methodology with health professionals, patients and their families, leads to fit-for-purpose safe and quality sustainable improvements that have lasting positive effects on service delivery.

What this study adds

Adolescents and young adults are often not included in opportunities to participate meaningfully in improving health services, and are often classified as a hard-to-reach population. This study demonstrates the value of engaging with young people and their families, elevating what they need from health services to access safe, quality care that meets their needs.

How this study might affect research, practice or policy

This study outlines the methodology employed to engage young people in a meaningful project to co-design a statewide strategy to improve the quality and safety of healthcare. It also demonstrates the rich qualitative data the authors gathered using these methods, leading to a publication that discusses advanced adolescent and young adult healthcare in Queensland.

Jorǰa Campbell and Brianna McCoola from Queensland Health about their collaborative experience in creating a Practice Guide to Adolescent and Young Adult Care. Discussing around the project’s development, the co-creation process, and the importance of involving young people in healthcare projects.

Jorǰa and Brianna discuss the inception and execution of the book, which has significantly influenced practice changes within the Queensland health system. Sharing insights into the co-creation process with young people, the challenges faced, and the strategies used to ensure flexible and meaningful consumer engagement. Also, discussing their efforts to engage university departments and health networks, ensuring the guide is widely accepted and practically applied in healthcare settings.

Under the theme “The Power of Us: Strengthening Systems and Deepening Resilience to Improve Quality in Health and Care,” the programme brings together global leaders, innovators, and practitioners to share learning and drive real-world improvement.

Across three dynamic days, you’ll discover new formats, fresh insights, and practical tools to build resilient systems, foster collaboration, and improve outcomes for patients and communities worldwide.

BMJ Group has partnered with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to strengthen how people and communities are involved in medical research.

Varied Voices, a free online course developed by NIHR and supported by BMJ Learning, helps healthcare professionals understand how inclusion and diversity improve the quality and impact of research. It offers practical ways to engage underrepresented groups and create more inclusive research environments.

 This collaboration reflects how BMJ Group and NIHR are working together to increase the reach and real-world impact of health and care research.

“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.” Sir William Osler

Who is it for
The course is suitable for all healthcare professionals involved in research, including:
GPs, GP trainees, hospital doctors, foundation doctors, practice and specialist nurses, allied health professionals, physician associates, medical students, and medical trainees.

What you will learn
After completing the course, you will be able to:

• Explain diversity, underrepresented voices, and public involvement in research

• Understand how inclusive practices improve the quality and relevance of health and care research

• Recognise barriers that discourage participation from underrepresented communities

• Apply strategies to make research more inclusive

• Evaluate how effectively your research promotes diversity and inclusion

“The purpose of this special supplement is to spur the development and maturation of social innovation in health as an academic field and to broaden multidisciplinary collaboration to this end. Here, contributors describe and analyse the history, concepts, tensions and research evidence of community-engaged social innovations and related person-centred approaches.

The overarching goal is to better understand how social innovations can be embedded in health education, training, research, policy, programmes and systems.

Ultimately, the special supplement will demonstrate how social innovation contributes toward a holistic approach to health and development.”

Joseph Tucker, MD, PhD
Professor of Medicine, Harvard University & London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Editorial: Social innovation in health: concepts and practice.

Crowdfunding for health research: a qualitative evidence synthesis and a pilot programme

Joint international consensus statement on crowdsourcing challenge contests in health and medicine: results of a modified Delphi process

Institutionalization of social innovations in health: the Philippine Gelia Castillo Award

Youth social innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines: a quantitative and qualitative descriptive analyses from a crowdsourcing open call and online hackathon

A community-engaged mHealth intervention to increase uptake of HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men in China: Study protocol for a pilot randomized controlled trial

Approaching healthcare delivery through a new lens: A pilot crowdsourcing challenge to identify health-related social innovations to increase universal health coverage in Nigeria

Facilitating learning exchange and building a community of practice to accelerate social innovation in health

The social appropriation of knowledge and its contributions to the prevention of cutaneous leishmaniasis in rural contexts

Building the social innovation for health ecosystem in Latin America: experiences and learning from SIHI-LAC

Social innovations to increase health coverage: evidence from a crowdsourcing contest in Ghana

Crowdfunding for health research: A global systematic review, qualitative evidence synthesis and TDR pilot for low- and middle-income country researchers

Lessons learned from applying a user-centred design process to develop one of the largest mobile health communication programmes in the world

Creating interventions to transition long-lasting insecticide net distribution in Ghana

Emulating value-chains of fast-moving consumer goods to improve uptake of co-packaged ORS and zinc for childhood diarrhoea: evaluation of the ColaLife trial

Description of global innovative methods in developing the WHO Community Engagement Package

Spotlight on Crowdfunding for health research: A global systematic review, qualitative evidence synthesis and TDR pilot for LMIC researchers

This article analyses a global youth crowdsourcing initiative aimed at enhancing social innovation in health within low- and middle-income countries. The WHO reference this research output in its practical guide on public engagement and crowdfunding in health research, indicating its relevance and impact on health policy discussions.

Helping to influence health policy in Peru

Dr Magaly Blas, MD, MPH, PhD, a medical epidemiologist and programme director of Mamás del Río at Cayetano Heredia Peruvian University, emphasises the importance of sharing her team’s experiences during the pandemic through publications in reputable journals like BMJ Innovations. Mamás del Río focuses on improving maternal and newborn health in remote indigenous communities along the Amazon River.

The pandemic severely disrupted health services, particularly in rural areas. To bridge this gap, Mamás del Río employs social innovations that empower community health workers with mobile technology, ensuring better patient outcomes. This social innovations special collection published by BMJ Group highlights the programme’s success in adapting to communication challenges during lockdowns, showcasing how local solutions can effectively address healthcare needs.

Since the publication of building the social innovation for health ecosystem in Latin America: experiences and learning from SIHI-LAC, the programme has expanded, and the Peruvian Health Minister implemented policy changes to integrate Mamás del Río into the national health system. This initiative enhances community health worker capacity and improves maternal and neonatal care in underserved regions.

Dr. Blas believes that research published in respected journals lends credibility to their work, ultimately influencing government policy for better health outcomes in Amazonian communities.

Mamás del Río initially started its pilot in 13 communities in the Loreto District in Peru and has since grown to include 84 communities located along 350 kilometres of river in the Amazon. A three-year programme evaluation found that the project improved almost all essential newborn care outcomes, specifically those related to thermal care, cord care, and breastfeeding. In addition, Mamás del Río increased hospital delivery.

In 2020, with the support of the Ministries of External Affairs of Peru and Colombia and the Inter-American Development Bank, the project was replicated as Mamas de la Frontera – expanding the programme along the border of Peru and Colombia in 30 communities. In 2023, further funding was secured to expand the project to 45 communities along the border for a further two years. In addition, the community health workers will provide care to children until one year of age, promoting vaccination, anemia prevention, and parenting without violence. CHW will also promote contraception and the prevention of violence against women.

“We found in BMJ a voice to report on what was happening to us during the pandemic to the international world. Having our research published in an important journal like BMJ Innovations shows evidence that our intervention is backed up by research. It also outlines the effect of what we are doing to improve the health of people in rural, remote and indigenous areas.”

Dr Magaly Blas
Professor and researcher, Cayetano Heredia Peruvian University, Peru

“BMJ Group has very good people on the ground. They made it happen, and it worked.”

Dr Luis Gabriel Cuervo
Senior Advisor for a leading international organisation specialising in health, on why he chose BMJ Group to publish the BMJ Innovations Social Innovations in Health special supplement.