Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

In emergencies, health research must go beyond public engagement toward a true partnership with those affected

Nature Medicine volume 26, pages 308–309 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 04 March 2020

This article has been updated

An Ebola virus outbreak taking place in the complex political and social context of The Democratic Republic of the Congo has forced the research community to reflect on their approach to community engagement. Katharine Wright and Michael Parker, on behalf of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Group on research in global health emergencies, say that those affected need to influence research choices from the very beginning and that the value of their knowledge must be recognized.

“When you don’t see the problem the same way, you can’t craft solutions together,” said a West African social scientist who was drawing on decades of experience working with communities during disease outbreaks (personal communication). He urged us to see beyond the procedural aspect of community engagement. We needed to see the artistry involved in “bringing two worlds face to face to build consensus.”

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Change history

References

  1. Nuffield Council on Bioethics. https://nuffieldbioethics.org/publications/research-in-global-health-emergencies (2020).

  2. Callaway, E. Nature 575, 425–426 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Mulangu, S., Dodd, L. E. & Davey, R. T. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 381, 2293–2303 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Nguyen, V.-K. N. Engl. J. Med. 380, 1298–1299 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Vinck, P., Pham, P. N., Bindu, K. K., Bedford, J. & Nilles, E. J. Lancet Infect. Dis. 19, 529–536 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Author notes

  1. A list of members and affiliations appears at the end of the paper.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nuffield Council on Bioethics, London, UK

    Katharine Wright

  2. Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities and the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Michael Parker

  3. WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories, University of York, York, UK

    Sanjoy Bhattacharya

  4. Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva and Director of the Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action (CERAH), Geneva, Switzerland

    Karl Blanchet

  5. University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Simon Caney

  6. Faculty of Medicine, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Emily Ying Yang Chan

  7. Preventive Medicine Department, Federal University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Beatriz da Costa Thomé

  8. Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Philippe Guérin

  9. University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Julian Hughes

  10. Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Patricia Kingori

  11. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

    Heidi Larson

  12. Ministry of Health, Monrovia, Liberia

    Soka Moses

  13. School of Law, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Sharifah Sekalala

  14. British Medical Association, London, UK

    Julian Sheather

  15. Department of Health Policy, Planning and Management, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana

    Paulina Tindana

Authors
  1. Katharine Wright
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Michael Parker
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Consortia

the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Group

  • Sanjoy Bhattacharya
  • , Karl Blanchet
  • , Simon Caney
  • , Emily Ying Yang Chan
  • , Beatriz da Costa Thomé
  • , Philippe Guérin
  • , Julian Hughes
  • , Patricia Kingori
  • , Heidi Larson
  • , Soka Moses
  • , Sharifah Sekalala
  • , Julian Sheather
  •  & Paulina Tindana

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katharine Wright.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Wright, K., Parker, M. & the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Group. In emergencies, health research must go beyond public engagement toward a true partnership with those affected. Nat Med 26, 308–309 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0758-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0758-y

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing