Care-full Synthesis

Sense about Science will be supporting the project by organising and delivering focus groups relating to the Wellcome Trust funded project Care-full Synthesis (370 28894). This includes: 1) lead focus group participant recruitment and focus group delivery in the UK, 2) facilitating focus group participant recruitment and focus group delivery in other countries, and 3) proving expert consultation on data analysis, output and dissemination.

The work is in line with Sense about Science's charitable mission of promoting the public interest in sound science and evidence. Sense about Science is an independent charity that promotes the public interest in sound science and evidence.

It works with decision-makers, world-leading researchers and community groups to raise the standard of evidence in public life. Sense about Science has over 20 years' experience in helping the public make sense of complex and challenging issues relating to evidence.

It has pioneered a 'public-led, expert-fed' approach to public engagement, which involves engaging early and directly with the public's questions and concerns and meeting people where they are in the discussion. This approach helps to ensure that the public's questions are heard and answered.

This experience will be particularly valuable when engaging the public on a topic as sensitive and potentially open to misunderstanding as the large-scale synthesis of human genomes. Sense about Science will be responsible for co-designing, co-organising and co-delivering a series of focus group discussions with members of the public in 3-4 countries, including the UK, in collaboration with other members of the project team.

This will involve: identifying and organising the recruitment of focus group participants; co-drafting discussion guides and managing the preparation of stimulus and other materials; co-organising and facilitating the focus group discussions; and co-drafting reports of the discussions and synthesising key findings. Sense about Science will also provide input and insights, drawing on its public engagement experience, into key documents, including white papers, primers, policy papers and other reports that the project team will produce throughout the life of the project.