Crafting qualitative health research for the future

Healthcare environments across the globe are encountering new challenges as they respond to changing populations, global austerity, rapid technological advances, personalised medicine and demands for more patient involvement. We believe that qualitative health research (QHR) can contribute to our understanding and responses to these challenges and we aim to expand and improve work in this field.

The UCL Qualitative Health Research Network (QHRN) will hold a networking and brainstorming event to create a forum for the critical analysis and improvement of QHR. We will hold the fourth QHRN symposium, a two-day event with 200 delegates, 20 oral presentations and 40 posters. We will also have our quarterly seminar series which showcases presentations from leading scholars in QHR.

These activities will result in a position paper with recommendations for the improvement of QHR, the publication of our proceedings from the symposium in a peer-reviewed journal, workshops and training opportunities, the continuation of communication channels for members of the network using our website, email listserv and Twitter account, and dissemination of findings of QHR to patient organisations, practitioners and policy makers.