The Role of Trust and Senior Leadership Sponsorship in Enabling Public and Patient Involvement in Health Systems

Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) is a value-based approach bringing diverse people together to build, refine or change parts of the health and social care systems (Ní Shé and Harrison 2021). At its core is an open reciprocal democratic process that aims for the equal participation of all participants. This approach moves from consulting to enabling the involvement of all from the start (Norton, 2022; Ní Shé et al. 2019; Robert et al., 2022). An important element in the realisation of PPI is the promotion of an individual’s rights and entitlements as well as person-centeredness (Norton, 2022). The question remains how health and social care systems respond to PPI contributions to enable and drive change, which remains underexplored. This chapter will explore the role of trust and senior leaders in enabling responsiveness and will outline the critical resources to enable sustained PPI change in the system. In particular, the article will argue that senior leaders need to be supported in their role to embed PPI as part of person-centred care.