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Rachel Plachcinski

Parent, Patient and Public Involvement (PPPI) Co-Lead

Improving the way parents, patients and the public are involved in our research

I work with Charlotte Bevan on parent, patient and public involvement (PPPI) for the DECIDE project. We also lead on PPPI at the Policy Research Unit in Maternal and Neonatal Health and Care (PRU-MNHC) at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU) at the Nuffield Department for Population Health (NDPH) at the University of Oxford.

PPPI means talking to and supporting individual parents, and also the organisations that support them through pregnancy and birth, to ensure the priorities and concerns of parents are included in research projects that may affect the care they receive. PPPI also contributes to the research results being shared in a way that is accessible to parents as well as clinical audiences.

I've been a journalist and an antenatal teacher. My interest in maternity research was sparked by the training and support I received from the National Childbirth Trust (NCT) after the birth of my three sons, and I went on to complete a BSc in Psychology and MSc in Psychological Approaches to Health at the University of Leeds. I was a parent representative on the INFANT trial looking at computerised interpretation of the fetal heart rate during labour.