Lorna Kerin

Lorna manages the PPI Research Unit in the University of Limerick. She is also Programme Manager for the UL PPI Ignite Network grant 2021-2026. Lorna has over 25 years of working in community and academic participatory health research. She is a Social Scientist, specialised in participatory health research, co-production methodologies, arts based research, and outcomes based accountability. She is also a qualified Integrative Psychotherapist and Creative Arts Therapist.

Lorna has a keen interest in implementation science and has developed multi-stakeholder county plans for area based interventions for children and young people in Dublin (Tusla Child and Family Agency) and evidence based intervention programmes in Regeneration areas of Limerick (Incredible Years). Her ongoing research since 2014 involves co-production initiatives with patients, clinicians and HSE Disability to inform the development of integrated health services for children and young people with the ‘most common’ of rare chromosomal disorders, 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. Lorna was previously Manager of Public Patient Involvement in Research at RCSI University of Medical and Healthcare Sciences, where she established the RCSI PPI Ignite Network to build institutional capacity for medical and healthcare researchers to conduct meaningful PPI. Lorna also previously led Public Patient Involvement in FutureNeuro SFI Center for Chronic and Rare Neurological Diseases where she established the first national Neurological PPI Panel and led out on the Deliberative Dialogue on Genomics to inform the implementation of national HSE policy.

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.