Valuing All Voices: refining a trauma-informed, intersectional and critical reflexive framework for patient engagement in health research using a qualitative descriptive approach.

Patient engagement in health research continues to exclude many people who face challenges in accessing healthcare, including (but not limited to) First Nations, Inuit, and Metis people; immigrants, refugees, and newcomers; and people with lived experience of a mental health condition. We proposed a new guide to help researchers engage with patients and members of the public in research decision-making in a meaningful, inclusive, and safe way. We called this the Valuing All Voices Framework, and met with people who identify as members of some of these groups to help define the key parts of the framework (trust; self-awareness; empathy; and relationship building), to tell us what they liked and disliked about the proposed framework, and what needed to be changed. Input from participants was used to change the framework, including clarifying definitions of the key parts, adding another key part called "education and communication", and providing action items so teams can put these key parts into practice.