Citizen Panels

Our Citizen Panels bring together members of the public to deliberate about pressing health challenges. The Community Panels all share six features:

• Preparatory consultation with partners helps to frame the focus for the series of Dialogues and identify the types of citizens whose views and experiences are relevant to the topic.
• Before a panel meeting or series of meetings, the Forum prepares an evidence brief that mobilizes research evidence about the health challenge in a concise and accessible way. These briefs are made publicly available after the Citizen Panel has met to review it.
• We convene a Citizen Panel, which brings together a group of 15 to 18 citizens (and occasionally as many as five to ten such groups) for a series of Dialogues that provides them with the opportunity to bring their own views and experiences to bear on the challenge, to learn from the evidence and from others’ views and experiences, and finally to share their newly informed views about the challenge and how to address it.
• After one or more panel meetings, the Forum circulates a summary of the citizen dialogue (as one type of event ‘footprint’ that will benefit others around the world), posting this on Forum’s website.
• The Forum conducts an evaluation of the key features of both the evidence brief and the Citizen Panel to ensure that the process contributes to our collective understanding about how citizens can best be engaged in shaping how society addresses health challenges.

For more information on citizen engagement and participation in public policy, please consult the following articles published by the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation.

InsightandAction articles on public engagement

• Public Engagement (Part I):* – Engaging The Public In Healthcare Policy: Why Do It? And What Are The Challenges?
• Public Engagement (Part II):* – How Do Deliberative Processes Achieve Meaningful Public Engagement?
• Public Engagement (Part III):* How is it done? How can we tell if its effective?