Prioritizing Knowledge User Engagement: Engaging Patients and the Public in Creating Enduring Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation Research.

Abstract

SYNOPSIS: To improve the potential for sustained success when implementing injury prevention programs, researchers must focus on patient and public involvement and engagement. Creating lasting equitable relationships between researchers and knowledge users (ie, improving patient and public involvement and engagement) takes time and purposeful investment. Researchers must prioritize, embrace, and integrate patient and public involvement and engagement as a dynamic and continuous social process, unique to each community setting; it is not a one-off checkbox. Recognizing that knowledge users across disciplines and settings are not passive scientific consumers, but active knowledge creators, begins the process of developing equitable partnerships. In this editorial, we highlight the importance of (1) equity in sport and orthopaedic medicine, (2) prioritizing patient and public involvement and engagement at all stages of the research process, and (3) focusing on a knowledge user-centered perspective when designing, analyzing, implementing, and subsequently evaluating musculoskeletal injury prevention programs. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2024;54(12):1-5. doi:10.2519/jospt.2024.12668.