Researchers
Fiona Cowdell in collaboration with the Centre of Evidence Based Dermatology, University of Nottingham, Universities of Southampton and Bristol, Imperial College London Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.
Project Aims
To improve the lives of people living with eczema by partnering with citizen scientists to deliver multiple, efficient online clinical trials and share new knowledge with those who need it.
Clinical trials are the best way of comparing different treatments, but are time-consuming and expensive to complete, and do not always answer questions of most importance to people with the condition. Collaborative citizen-science is a way of ensuring that members of the public can lead in defining and conducting studies that answer questions of importance to them. Citizen-science has been shown to make research more relevant and accessible for people from all walks of life, improves uptake of study findings and people’s understanding of research. Our unique approach in this project will be to combine the benefits of citizen-science with latest developments in efficient clinical trial design.
We will use our longstanding links with the eczema community to establish a wide group of citizen scientists who will work with us to answer questions about the management of eczema. We aim to include people of all ages, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic groups and work with social influencers and community champions to enhance diversity across all aspect of the programme and ensure relevance to different communities.
The citizen scientists will work in partnership with researchers and clinicians, who will help deliver the trials and ensure methodological standards are met. We will also explore what has worked well and what hasn’t, so that lessons can be learned for citizen-science trials in other areas.
Funder: National Institute for Health Research Programme Grant for Applied Research
Find out more about the Centre for Social Care, Health and Related Research