Lorna Kerin

Lorna Kerin is RCSI Manager of Public Patient Involvement (PPI) in Research at RCSI University of Medical and Health Sciences. This involves building capacity and facilitating strategic health research partnerships to ensure research at RCSI is meaningfully informed by patients’ lived experience, service users’ perspectives and stakeholders’ diverse expertise such as patient and carer advocacy organisations, service providers, clinicians and policy makers. Lorna also manages the PPI Ignite Work Package 3: ‘PPI in Institutional Policies and Procedures’ on behalf of the Co-Leads Professor Gianpiero Cavelleri (RCSI) and Professor Thilo Kroll (UCD).

Lorna is a qualified Social Researcher (BA, UL, 1995), an Integrative Psychotherapist (H.Dip, UCC, 2001), and specialised at Masters level in expressive therapies and research with at risk children (MCAT, RMIT Melbourne, 2005). Professional training includes Participatory Action Research (DCU, 2015), Leadership (DCU, 2017), Co-Production in Research (University of Highlands, 2019) and Public PPI in Research (UL, 2021). Before her appointment to RCSI, Lorna worked with Tusla Child and Family Agency to collaboratively develop county-wide interagency structures to co-produce the first evidence-informed child and youth population plan for Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. Lorna is also Founding Director of Love Knowledge Consultancy, which supports charitable organisations to engage in Public Patient Involvement research to improve healthcare service provision. She most recently has supported the patient organisation 22q11 Ireland to collaboratively develop paediatric, transition and adult healthcare specialist clinics with hospital consultants and to secure the first ‘complex care’ coordinator funded by the HSE in Ireland as a national pilot initiative.