Community Open Day raises public awareness of research

The Royal Surrey Community Open Day on 23 September provided CRN Kent, Surrey and Sussex (CRN KSS) with the perfect opportunity to engage directly with the local community.

On the day, CRN KSS supported Royal Surrey’s Research, Development and Innovation team in delivering two “mock” research projects. One was a “Chocolate Study”, designed to assess the impact of chocolate on participants’ mood. The other was a “Smell Study”, which used equipment from an actual clinical trial taking place in the hospital to test people’s sense of smell.

CRN KSS was represented on the day by Project Manager for Homecare Services, Kelly Wilson.

“Events such as this open day are vital to the way we engage with people,” she said. “The open day was a great opportunity to promote NIHR initiatives like Be Part of Research and Join Dementia Research. But perhaps more importantly, it was a chance to talk to members of the public about research and the NIHR in general.

“We had so many interesting conversations with people who wanted to know more about research, building that general awareness that is so important to the future success of research, and the mission of the NIHR.

“My role focuses on building relationships with providers of homecare services, and hospitals provide an excellent touchpoint for engaging with service users and health and care providers,” said Kelly. “I hope we will do more projects like this in the future.”