Lorna Kerin

Lorna manages the Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) Research Unit in University of Limerick. She is also Programme Manager for the UL PPI Ignite Network (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 Programme Manager of PPI Ignite Network at RCSI University of Medical and Healthcare Sciences, working to build institutional capacity for medical and healthcare researchers to conduct meaningful PPI. Lorna also previously led PPI 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.