Stronger Together Chat Summary PxP 2025

The Stronger together: building capacity on research teams session aimed to be an inclusive session to support patient engagement research teams. Speakers brought information about resources that assist teams in building capacity together, including those related to engaging diverse team members.

Facilitator: Knoll Larkin

Speakers: Rachel Giles, BC Pomeroy

Recording is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xoHZmA8tqY

We were very grateful to the attendees for their excellent engagement with the session. This page is a summary of some of the conversations from the live session and re-watch party. This summary also includes resources and anonymised quotes that were shared by attendees in the Zoom Chat. We have collated everything here as part of our commitment to accessibility, so that people who attended the session have the opportunity to reflect on the content in a different format, and also so that people who were unable to join the session live can still have the opportunity to learn with and from their peers.

Please note that some of the quotes shared below have been attributed to one of the session speakers, as these are words that attendees shared in the Chat which particularly resonated with them.

This summary article was created with assistance from Microsoft Copilot, an AI-powered tool that helped organize, synthesize, and format content based on session notes and discussions. All notes were reviewed and anonymized by the PxP team before Copilot assisted with the task.

1. Advocacy and Community-Centered Knowledge Translation

Participants emphasized the importance of tailoring advocacy presentations to community audiences, noting that traditional academic formats often fall short.

"This is all so important to professional, scientific and policy stakeholders. But, I present a lot of advocacy presentations for knowledge translation in the community and stats, graphs and citations are typically not well received."

"Thanks Rachel, a comprehensive overview of advocacy and a great organizational graph of where we fit within the research continuum."

2. Language, Identity, and Representation

Discussions explored the power of inclusive language and representation, especially in gender and disability advocacy.

"As a trans person I love the trans rep in this session."

"Yes!! Making women's health more inclusive."

"Love the recognition of how gender is seen globally."

"Noting here that 'interest holders' is a term people are using to replace 'stakeholder' to avoid the colonial connotations."

Participants also shared alternative terms like “vested parties,” “knowledge users,” and “interest holders” to replace “stakeholders,” referencing guidance on inclusive terminology:

Writing Guide for Indigenous Content

3. Visual and Neurodiverse Learning Tools

The value of visual communication tools was highlighted, especially for neurodiverse learners and multilingual communities.

"I used to work in disaster management and loved the proliferation of large visual communication tools to overcome language barriers in a crisis."

"Not only language barriers... for those of us who are neuro-spicey (ADHD etc) it’s sometimes the difference between learning and simply being present."

Projects like The Tapestry Project (https://diversity-tapestry.com/) and Beyond the Binary (https://whri.org/our-initiatives/beyond-the-binary/) were praised for their inclusive design and accessibility.

4. Co-Design and Capacity Bridging

Speakers and attendees reflected on the importance of co-design and capacity bridging in research partnerships.

"This is a really good case-study for co-design."

"Capacity bridging — wow that makes so much sense."

"Within research teams, I would love to see routine integration of patient partners (or even creative/tech professionals who are allies) who have transversal skills like design thinking, illustrations, graphic design, software programming, storytelling."

Other Reflections

The session was described as deeply resonant, inclusive, and thought-provoking.

"Blown away BC! Your presentation deeply resonated with me. Let’s stay connected."

"This journey certainly has involved a lot of learning but I feel the more I learn the more there seems to be to still learn."

"I love that last comment — ‘deliberate, intentional and dignity-enhancing.’"