Crafting Qualitative Health Research for the Future (360G-Wellcome-210576_Z_18_Z)

Healthcare environments across the globe are encountering new challenges as they respond to changing populations, global austerity, rapid technological advances, personalised medicine, and demands for more patient involvement. We believe that qualitative health research (QHR) can contribute to our understanding and responses to these challenges, and we have developed a proposal which aims to expand and improve the work of this field. This proposed work will be conducted through our UCL Qualitative Health Research Network (QHRN) and will include the following activities: 1) a networking and brainstorming event to create a forum for the critical analysis and improvement of QHR; 2) the fourth QHRN symposium, a two-day event with 200 delegates, 20 oral presentations and 40 posters; and 3) our quarterly seminar series, which showcases presentations from leading scholars in QHR. The main outputs generated through these events and activities will include: A position paper detailing recommendations for the improvement of QHR, publication of our proceedings from the symposium in a peer-reviewed journal, workshops and other training opportunities at the QHRN Symposium, the continuation of communication channels for members of the network (website, email listserv, and Twitter account), and dissemination of findings of QHR to patient organisations, practitioners and policymakers.