Strategies to engage stakeholders in research to improve acute care delivery

Many families involved in research are well versed in the care system due to chronic conditions. Engagement of families of children with serious acute illnesses is infrequent, and no studies have documented the feasibility or acceptability of different methods of family engagement. We describe a model used in the Hospital-to-Home Outcomes study, which utilized a novel approach of short-term focused engagement of families and other stakeholders to incorporate the unique viewpoints of families whose care experience is primarily focused around the period surrounding their child's hospitalization for acute illness.