Here’s a few things that I’ve been collecting and now seems as good a time as ever to gather them together and share them as one.

Researchers may wish to note the following exercise that is running throughout universities and institutions to identify barrier to public engagement.  It’s a repeat of an exercise done by the Royal Society ten years ago.  The aim is to see how much progress has been made and what still needs to be done.  If you get invited to do the survey please do take part – it’s important!

The Welsh Government’s research arm (formerly called NISCHR for short) has rebranded itself as the much more sensible sounding Health and Care Research Wales.  Along with announcing £squllions of funding for some new research centres and units there, it also launched its new HealthWise Wales initiative in which it’s asking all people over 16 in Wales to join in research across the nation.

A really wonderful storify of  pictures and messages from the ‘NIHROKtoask’ campaign up and down the country has been produced by the excellent communications team at the NIHR Clinical Research Network Co-ordinating Centre.  You can find it here.

Here’s also a storify of that brilliant report about involving young people in research produced by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.

Cancer Research UK produced a very interesting report about the state of clinical research in the NHS with lots of recommendations for improvement not least more support for the workforce.  The report entitled ‘Every Patient a Research Patient’ is here.  Actually, I think it should be ‘every willing patient.’  Force of habit I suppose.

Progress Educational Trust have been conducting a survey of the readers of BioNews on their views about the 100,000 genome project.  Last week they released the findings of the poll of over 750 people finding that 74% of people would take part in the project if asked. The survey is also interesting in looking at the reasons why people would or would not participate.  You can find a brief article about the exercise which has been conducted on behalf of Genomics England here.

The Health Research Authority (HRA) has issued guidance on what information patients should be provided with at the end of a research study.  They consulted widely on this, earlier in the year.

The Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) has a new Chair, Lord Sharkey.  No, he’s neither a historian or ocean biologist.  Here’s his bio.  You might also be interested to know that charities who have run a James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership (PSP) have set up a shared learning group.  Contact AMRC direct for more info.

Remember, pennies make pounds.