Real involvement. Real evidence. Real impact.
PPI communities trust. Evidence that brings impact.
Communect is a Cardiff-based specialist consultancy for patient and public involvement in health research. We combine clinical credibility with hands-on delivery, working alongside our clients rather than simply advising from the sidelines.
Organisations we have worked with.
The bar for PPI is rising.
Most researchers know PPI matters. The challenge is finding the time, the right communities, and the methodology to do it well. Funders expect it. Ethics committees scrutinise it. And the communities giving their time deserve more than a process designed around convenience.
Getting PPI right means thinking carefully about these three things:
01
Built in, not bolted on.
PPI works best when it starts at the beginning, not the submission deadline. Involvement that is added at the end rarely satisfies funders and rarely means much to the communities asked to participate.
02
Representative, not convenient.
The communities most relevant to your research are not always the easiest to reach. Recruiting through existing networks or usual contacts is not the same as genuine representation.
03
Evidenced, not assumed.
Funders and commissioners across the UK want to see how involvement shaped the work, not just that it happened. That requires a structured approach to capturing and reporting what involvement produced.
Reviewers can tell when PPI was an afterthought.
Communect makes sure yours is not.
About Communect
Communect was founded by NHS doctors Amaka Dibigbo and Kendra-Jean Nwamadi. Clinical practice did not teach them PPI methodology. What it did was make the stakes impossible to ignore. When you have worked directly with patients, you understand in a way that is difficult to learn from literature alone what it costs when research is designed without the people it affects. They built Communect because they wanted to do something about that.
"Communities trust the process. Researchers trust the results."
Dr Amaka Dibigbo and Dr Kendra-Jean Nwamadi
Hear from Christianah
Real voices. Real experiences.
The communities we work with are not a research resource. They are people with knowledge, experience, and perspectives that researchers need. This is one of them.
Who we work with
Researchers and grant applicants
We work with researchers preparing funding applications who need PPI built into their bid from the start, not added as an afterthought.
NHS bodies and health innovation organisations
We work with NHS bodies, health innovation organisations, and third sector groups that need to build public involvement into how they work, whether that means developing a strategy, delivering training, or recruiting the right communities.
Life sciences and MedTech
We work with life sciences and MedTech companies that need documented, evidenced involvement for regulatory submissions.
What we do
We design PPI strategy, recruit the right communities, facilitate sessions, analyse what emerges, and build the internal capability for teams to carry it forward. We work alongside our clients at every stage.
01
Strategy and Design
We work with you before anything else is decided. The right approach depends on the research question, the communities involved, and what the evidence needs to demonstrate. We design that from the ground up, rather than applying a template.
02
Recruitment and Community Access
Purposive recruitment means identifying who should be in the room based on what the research actually needs, not defaulting to whoever is easiest to reach.
03
Facilitation and Evaluation
We design and facilitate PPI sessions that produce usable, evidenced data, and we produce evaluation outputs built to satisfy funder, ethics committee, and regulatory expectations. Impact statements, thematic analysis, and involvement reports included.
04
Training and Capability
We run training for research and innovation teams on doing PPI well, and help organisations build the community partner networks they need for representative involvement at pace.
Case studies
We have worked across NHS Wales, health innovation, and community organisations. These are two examples.
Helping a health technology body ask better questions about the people affected by its decisions.
The challenge
HTW wanted to strengthen their existing patient evidence tool by building in a stronger focus on the perspectives of people most often missing from health technology discussions.
What we did
Communect added an equity and inclusion lens to the existing tool and delivered a training workshop for HTW's advisory group, helping teams think more carefully about who may be missing from conversations and how to encourage genuine reflection.
Outcome
The updated tool is now being used within HTW topic discussions from June 2026.
The blank sheet approach™
The Blank Sheet Approach™ is Communect's own methodology for designing public involvement. It governs how we design every study, engagement programme, and involvement activity we deliver. We do not arrive with a predetermined method.
We developed it because most PPI goes wrong not because people do not care, but because the assumptions are already in place before anyone has spoken to a community member. The Blank Sheet Approach™ starts from what the community and the research actually need — and builds from there.
When we design engagement work, we open with the topic, not the research question. The community's frame of reference shapes what we learn and how the study is designed, not the other way around.
Upcoming event
PPIE In Action
Bring a topic, not a question.
A women’s health event for researchers in Cardiff. Learn the Blank Sheet Approach, then put it into practice with women from communities across the city, each paid for their time and expertise.
Women’s health: being heard
Wednesday 9 December 2026
Grange Pavilion, Cardiff · 9:45 to 14:00
- A morning workshop on the Blank Sheet Approach™
- Q&A with women with lived experience
- Open Tables with paid community members
Applying for funding?
Talk to us before you submit.
We can be named as your specialist PPI partner in the application itself, providing the credibility that funders and ethics committees expect to see.