Carmel McGrath

Carmel McGrath is a Senior Research Fellow in Public Involvement at the School of Health and Social Wellbeing, University of the West of England. She serves as Public Involvement Co-Lead for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) West and the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Evaluation and Behavioural Science (HPRU EBS), and co-leads People in Health West of England with Dr. Andy Gibson.

Education:

• Dual trained child and adult nurse with critical care background
• PhD from University of Southampton (funded by NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre), exploring long-term impacts of public involvement in research

Research Interests: Dr. McGrath specializes in public involvement evaluation methodologies, community engagement frameworks, and practical implementation of participatory research. Her work focuses on developing logic models to capture public involvement impacts, designing initiatives like the award-winning Health Research Ambassador programme and World Café events, and building researcher capacity in inclusive community engagement. She emphasizes translating academic research into actionable tools for diverse populations through cross-sector collaboration.

Collaborations: She actively partners with NIHR ARC West, NIHR HPRU EBS, People in Health West of England, Bristol Health Partners, CaafiHealth, UK Health Security Agency, University of Auckland, and Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Her work includes evaluating public involvement using impact logs and the cube evaluation framework to advance methodological standards in participatory health research.