Spotlight on Engagement: Elizabeth Burnside

Screening Mammography Patient Advisory Committee

Lead Researcher: Elizabeth S. Burnside, MD, MPH, MS; Department of Radiology, UW-Madison

What is the focus of your research?

Advancing shared decision making for breast cancer screening.

How has stakeholder engagement helped your project so far?

Having the CARDS review our Patient Advisory Committee (PAC) recruitment flyer, letter and telephone script was tremendously useful. They recommended significant changes, which WINRS incorporated into revised materials for us. As a result, our PAC recruitment was extremely successful.

What is a lesson you’ve learned from your stakeholder engagement work?

At first, we were apprehensive—we do not have much experience with stakeholder engagement and were concerned that patient-centered research can be challenging and time consuming. But our PAC members have already contributed a significant element of validity to the goals of the project.

Services provided by WINRS to the research team:

  • Sharing strategies to recruit and train the Patient Advisory Board
  • Facilitating a CARDS meeting to review PAC recruitment materials and plans
  • Developing and delivering a targeted orientation program for the PAC
  • Coaching team to support effective and sustained PAC engagement
  • Evaluating PAC processes and outcomes (at the end of year one)