Target audience

Public Health researchers with an interest in participatory and qualitative methods, who are not yet familiar with co-creation

Description

Co-creation is a participatory research approach for understanding complex problems and developing solutions in specific contexts. The goal is to bring together representatives from relevant stakeholder groups to collaboratively work on a problem. Who these stakeholders are varies by situation, but they are usually the people affected by, responsible for, or otherwise involved in the problem or its solution. In co-creation, these stakeholders are considered experts in their own fields and take on the role of equal partners with researchers, aiming to promote ownership of the developed solutions and to integrate their knowledge and perspectives on the problem and how it should be addressed. This way, solutions are developed that are likely to be supported by these stakeholder groups, fit the context, and tackle the core of the problem.

In recent years, co-creation has gained popularity in public health research, often as a way to design more relevant, acceptable, and impactful health interventions, or to grasp the complexity of problems in systematic thinking. This toolkit aims to introduce public health researchers who are unfamiliar with co-creation to this approach.