Partnering with Bereaved Parents in Pregnancy and Baby Loss Research

The Stillbirth CRE is committed to strengthening meaningful partnerships between bereaved parents, researchers and clinicians across pregnancy and baby loss research.

Bereaved parent partnership improves research by bringing lived experience, insight and determination into the questions we ask, the way studies are designed, and how findings are translated into better care. When done well, partnership helps ensure research is relevant, respectful, and more likely to make a difference for families.

Through Project Engage, bereaved parents, researchers and collaborators have worked together to build clearer, more practical guidance for involving parents across the research lifecycle. This work recognises that goodwill alone is not enough. Ethical and effective partnership requires shared expectations, clear roles, appropriate support, and attention to power, safety and decision-making.

Partnering with Bereaved Parents in Pregnancy and Baby Loss Research has been developed to support researchers and clinicians to plan, undertake and sustain bereaved parent involvement in ways that are meaningful, accountable and well supported.

The guide provides practical considerations for working with bereaved parents across research design, governance, delivery and translation.