Nino Burduladze*, Laundette P. Jones, Brian D. Jones, Uchizi Msowoya, Jon Salsberg, Anna Whitney.Meghan Gilfoyle
Participatory Health Research (PHR) as a research paradigm guides the research process and strives to achieve positive change in society in the interest of people’s health. In this scoping review, PHR will be used as an umbrella term considering a wide range of collaborative research approaches in the health context. PHR is conducted ‘with’ or ‘by’ those it intends to benefit, as opposed to ‘on’ and ‘for’ them. Their involvement throughout the research process seeks to shift power and decision-making from where they traditionally lay within academia toward community, patient and public end-users. Research cannot be truly participatory without concurrently addressing power dynamics within the partnership and power imbalances in decision making. Therefore, power sharing can be defined as a major factor in building effective academic-community collaborations. This scoping review aims to identify, clarify, and map existing literature on power and power sharing in PHR from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Specifically, we will explore how power conceptualised throughout the literature, and how power and power sharing are applied and addressed in real-life PHR partnerships.