Out & About: PPIE National Summit at Ziauddin University, Pakistan
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CHEX: out and about
Part of CHEX’s work is to connect with academic partners in Scotland, the UK, and beyond, who have a particular interest in promoting and supporting community-led action research, as a way of understanding and tackling health inequalities.
In late 2025, this work led to Sarah taking a (virtual!) journey all the way to Karachi in Pakistan, for a summit focused on establishing a national Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Network to support the meaningful inclusion of patients and wider members of the public in research.
Dr Arishay Husseini and Dr Timo Tolppa have pioneered the development of the patient and public involvement and engagement group in clinical trials in Pakistan.
Ahead of the summit, Sarah met with them and they kindly shared their time and expertise, discussing their approach and what they learned in developing collaborative and shared leadership with community members within a clinical trial context.
A full case study of their work will be available, along with learning from other organisations in the CHEX network on collaborative leadership, in an upcoming publication on Relationships in Community Work.
Different places, similar spaces
Arishay and Timo, like so many people in our network, are enthusiastic and skilled in undertaking values-based, community-led work which creates the space where formal and statutory bodies can share power, learn alongside and co-create solutions with local community members.
They shared their experiences of building trust, sharing power, creating equitable relationships, and building shared understanding and co-creating solutions.
Pakistan and Scotland may on the surface seem like quite different contexts, but the stories that Arishay and Timo shared of patient and public engagement would be remarkably familiar to many of you, we suspect.
An international community of shared aspirations
Following these meetings Sarah was invited to represent CHEX at the National PPIE summit in Karachi. The summit shared learning and insights from similar initiatives from across Pakistan on the benefits of community and public engagement within health research with an aim of working towards a national network to support this work.
It was a fantastic and inspiring conference, to which CHEX were privileged to be invited, and to learn from colleagues in Pakistan.
Dr Madiha Hashmi, Chair of Critical Care Medicine at Ziauddin University, reflected on her aims and objectives for community, patient and public engagement in research, which so closely align with our own here in Scotland:
“…By closing the gap between researchers and the public, we are building trust and creating a shared space where decisions are informed, inclusive, and meaningful for everyone.”
With increasing focus on working with communities from the academic sector in Scotland, we have much to learn from and share with our national and international colleagues engaged in community development and community-led work around the world.
And Sarah looks forward to her next chance to ‘visit’ and discuss this learning with other international colleagues, even if it is over Zoom!
For more information on Dr Husseini and Dr Tolppa’s research, you can read this journal article:
Patient and public involvement and engagement in critical care research in low and middle-income countries: challenges and solutions (PDF)
And there’s more on the PPIE work happening in Pakistan on the Ziauddin University website.