In conversation with the UserInvolve Program manager
Hi Urban Markström, overall program manager for UserInvolve!
What is special about this large research program?
The program is a collaboration between more than a dozen researchers from five different Swedish universities, with backgrounds in different research disciplines. This is not unique, of course, but broad academic collaborations can often be challenging to bring about. What is unique about this program, however, is the close collaboration we have had with the organized user movement throughout the process of developing and then running the program. For example, we finance a coordinator who is linked to NSPH and is part of the research team. In addition, we collaborate with a high number of other organizations, such as government agencies, regions, and municipalities. So perhaps what makes the program special is all the collaborative contacts!
Why is UserInvolve important?
It remains to be seen whether the activities carried out within the program will have an impact. The phenomenon of user involvement, which we are interested in within the program, is something that has long been a feature of psychiatry. Previously, this was mainly through the absence of involvement. Today, user involvement is a buzzword, mainly at the policy level. It is therefore important to gain more knowledge about involvement at different levels: What are the motives behind efforts to promote involvement? What strategies are used? And what do the initiatives lead to?
What are you most looking forward to with UserInvolve?
I am mainly looking forward to the knowledge we can extract from the various research studies—there is so much to find out that we don't know about today. Within the program, we also have an ambition to develop forms of co-creation in research, i.e., we are trying to test and document new ways of working together with those affected by the research throughout the entire research process. This is uncharted territory for many of us, but at the same time it is very exciting!
What is the key challenge right now?
For me personally, it’s probably keeping everyone together and navigating all the different constellations of people involved in our sub-projects and in the program as a whole. We researchers are often spoiled by being able to do our own thing and not having to “negotiate” our choice of research questions or perspectives with people outside the research community. In UserInvolve, we do the opposite and try to involve other people’s experiences right from the start when we begin planning a study. This means that the work can be time-consuming, and there can also be difficulties in recruiting the people and partners we need to involve in the projects. So, time is probably the biggest challenge.
Who will benefit most from the results?
Good question. The ambition is to try to balance the benefits for municipalities, regions, and user organizations, while making a significant contribution to the scientific community. We focus on concrete strategies for user involvement, where we want to study the current situation and investigate how strategies can be developed and with what results. The hope is that the work will be of direct benefit to several actors in the field of mental health—in the best case, an expanded repertoire of instruments for involvement work. In terms of benefits for research, I believe that a contribution may be in the form of methods for co-production in research and the question of how this can be studied and documented. I think we are working on something relatively unique in this regard, actually!
