Research policies & Patient and Public Involvement

Through efficient research management and the adoption of industry good practice, we ensure that the research we fund has the maximum impact.

Transforming the lives of people with a lived experience of scarring is at the heart of everything we do. This means our research must be original and relevant.

To ensure this is the case, we work in partnership with people with a lived experience of scarring to plan, design, manage, evaluate and communicate our research.

We ask our researchers to demonstrate that their research represents value for money and make the results of their research available to everyone through ‘gold standard’ Open Access publications.

Patient and Public Involvement

INVOLVE, the Advisory Panel set up by the National Institute of Health Research to advance involvement in medical research provides the following definition of Patient and Public Involvement:

“INVOLVE defines public involvement in research as research being carried out ‘with’ or ‘by’ members of the public rather than ‘to’, ‘about’ or ‘for’ them. This includes, for example, working with research funders to prioritise research, offering advice as members of a project steering group, commenting on and developing research materials and undertaking interviews with research participants".

The involvement of 'people with a 'lived experience' of scarring and our Scar Free Foundation Ambassadors are present throughout our activities, Advisory Panels, Research Council, and on our Board of Trustees.

Ensuring Value in Research

The Ensuring Value in Research Funders' Forum (EViR) is made up for research organisations from eight countries who work together to develop new approaches to increase value in research. We adhere to the EViR Consensus Statement and ask that all Scar Free Foundation-funded researchers ensure that the EViR Guiding Principles are embedded in the study design, management and dissemination of their research. To find out more about EViR please click here.

Open Data/ AMRC Open Research

We want to ensure that everyone can access our research and that our researchers put as much information as possible into the public domain for the general benefit of the scar free research community. We ask that researchers make summary results of clinical trials publicly available in a timely manner following primary study completion and make datasets developed as part of Scar Free Foundation-funded research available in appropriate registries.

The Foundation is also a member of the AMRC Open Research platform. Research platforms give researchers with a place they can rapidly publish research results. Publications are immediately put into the public domain and transparently reviewed.