The Healthwatch Essex Research Ambassador Network launched in 2023 and is open anyone interested in health and care research, regardless of educational and professional background. Our Research Ambassadors have the chance to develop their research skills and meet other researchers from different backgrounds. In this blog, our Research Manager Kate and Research Ambassadors Molly, Munia, and Ben celebrate the Research Ambassadors and all that we’ve achieved together over the last three years.
Since we set up the Research Ambassador Network in 2023, we have recruited 46 Research Ambassadors. We have welcomed Ambassadors from diverse backgrounds, including lived experience researchers, health care practitioners, social research apprentices, students, and colleagues from across the voluntary sector. Our Research Ambassadors have joined for lots of different reasons. ‘It’s good for me to learn from other organisations with an established research team to help me develop’, shares Molly. Munia describes joining the Network because ‘it is a fantastic way to connect with like-minded individuals, share insights, and contribute to meaningful advancements in the field’.
We support our Research Ambassadors through bi-monthly meetings. Speakers are invited to share their projects with us so that we can learn about new health and care research. We’ve welcomed researchers from the University of Leeds, King’s College London, and the Carers Trust amongst many others. Our WhatsApp community group supports Research Ambassadors to build connections. There they can take part in our monthly Journal Club, which introduces Ambassadors to different methods and topics and encourages supportive discussion. As Munia writes, ‘It’s a safe space for me to communicate with other people from different backgrounds and areas’. Research Ambassadors have also kindly written for our Research Reflections blog series, and we’ve been fortunate to share their reflections on diverse topics including women’s health and austerity, wilderness therapy, young carers, and publishing academic articles, to name a few.
Our Research Team benefit hugely from the time that Research Ambassadors volunteer to support our projects. Since the Network started, our Research Ambassadors have volunteered across seven Healthwatch Essex projects, joining us for planning meetings, sense-checking project documents, promoting recruitment, and supporting data analysis. Our Ambassadors’ involvement is crucial to the rigour of our projects, ensuring that our analysis is informed by diverse views and perspectives. By supporting our projects, Research Ambassadors have also developed their knowledge. ‘I have learnt about so many things’, says Molly, ‘from gaining ethical approval; health conditions I didn’t know existed; thematic analysis of qualitative data…the list goes on!’. Munia described how the Network provides the opportunity to ‘learn from the experienced researchers, understand methodologies, and to develop the skills needed to conduct impactful studies’.
Research Ambassador Ben has been involved in the Network since it was established. He has offered invaluable support and insights for our projects over the years. Here he shares his own experiences as a Research Ambassador:
“As someone with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and an autistic spectrum condition I have often faced stigma, exclusion, discrimination and even fear (For example, see my article on ‘Insanaphobia’ and ‘schizophobia’: a schizophrenic’s account’ in the journal Psychosis). My health conditions have often barred me from work and a social life. Healthwatch Essex’s Research Ambassador Network has been a game changer and solved this problem for me.
I have been a Research Ambassador for over three years now. I began on a project on understanding inequalities in learning disability, which was later published in the British Journal of Learning Disabilities (Gray and Kerridge, 2023). This research report and article made many recommendations to improve hospital services for people with learning disability based on my own and participants’ experiences. For example: To have learning disability ambassadors of people with learning disability to help guide visitors to hospitals, an environment that can sometimes be confusing, overwhelming and even hostile; Also, a sunflower lanyard for staff to show people with learning disabilities that staff are approachable and welcoming; And finally, what one participant described as “a yellow brick road” or markings on hospital corridors to guide people with learning disability to their destination.
It was also due to Healthwatch Essex that I found employment as a volunteer peer worker. I have helped people with mental illness on two male mental health acute units and been able to draw on my own lived experience of schizophrenia to give people emotional and practical support, feelings of care, comfort, dignity and empowerment.
Being a Research Ambassador and Peer Worker has given me a purpose, more motivation, increased confidence and self-esteem in both my working life and also personally. Before becoming a Research Ambassador and Peer Worker I was hearing voices, had difficulties communicating and was emotionally flat. Being a Research Ambassador and Peer Worker has enabled me to overcome these challenges. I can now connect with my own and other people’s feelings and experiences and communicate in a way that is therapeutic and very valued by people with mental illness.
Finally, I have achieved what Julie Repper, the Director of Imroc (who I trained with to become a Peer Worker), described as “a record” of 14 publications based on lived experience and peer support in 2024 and 2025. This includes an account of ‘Hearing voices – What Helps?’ in the flagship magazine of the British Psychological Society, The Psychologist. Without Healthwatch Essex none of this would have been possible.
I would urge anyone with lived experience and an interest in research to join the Research Ambassador Network. You will find it interesting, rewarding, very valuable and intellectually stimulating. Being a Research Ambassador has been very fulfilling. I feel valued and involved by a good and supportive team, so no longer feel excluded and marginalised.
I would also urge the Government and powers that be to keep funding Healthwatch Essex so it can continue its important work of capturing and advocating for people’s voices via research”.
If you would like more information about our Research Ambassador Network, please contact our Research Manager Dr Kate Mahoney at [email protected].
References:
Gray, B. & Kerridge, T. (2023). Lived experience research in learning disabilities: The understanding inequalities project from a service user’s perspective, British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 51 (4), pp.479-488.