Table 11 Organisational capacity and infrastructure for public involvement

Capacity in organisations

∙ Mobilising advocates of public involvement

 ◦ Positioning of supporters of public involvement: senior leaders, managers or professional facilitators as ‘organisational drivers’ [54, 56, 63, 68]

 ◦ Positioning of publics: advisory groups and advocate roles and offices [54, 68]

∙ Supportive research infrastructure within research organisations

 ◦ Reform to usual organisational arrangements, such as academic committees and committee memberships (e.g. tenure and promotion committees, ethical review committees) [61, 65]

 ◦ Novel organisational forms, e.g. organisations led by service-user researchers, owned and stewarded by communities [68], arrangements for specific communities (e.g. Aboriginal Health Research) [62], creation of joint research appointments (community, research organisations), nodal networks or centres [61]

Capacity for research systems

∙ Mobilising advocates of public involvement

 ◦ Strategic and structural positioning of publics in key research organisations and roles: “structurally involved in formal decision-making processes” [2] at “strategic level” [37] (see also [39, 51])

∙ Supportive research infrastructure across research systems

 ◦ Infrastructure to overcome “fragmented and uncoordinated” structures for involvement [55], such as a single access point or ‘portal’ for publics [17], or state-wide registers of consumers, which could aid researchers and offer match-making [68]

 ◦ Infrastructure developed or supported by states or major research, e.g. in United Kingdom, the Consumers in NHS Research Support Unit [4], INVOLVE, James Lind Alliance [40], or developed collaboratively for “economies of effort” for those providing training or engaging in consultation, and to minimise the challenge of “consultation fatigue” [57]

∙ Challenges of overly professionalised public involvement infrastructure – “thriving and burgeoning public involvement infrastructure” with a “new strata of jobs with titles such as ‘Public Involvement Lead/Facilitator/Adviser/Coordinator’” that had not supported a shift in “power to the people” [37]