Karen has a background in health sciences and health promotion. She has over 20 years experience of involving patients, service users, carers and the public in health service design and development and she is currently Public Involvement Advisor at the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN). Karen’s career in public involvement started within the voluntary sector where she was responsible for engaging young people in the development of smoking cessation services within the NHS.

Karen joined SIGN in 2004. Her work includes the involvement of patients, service users and carers in guidelines; development of patient/public versions of guidelines; the involvement of patients, service users and carers in implementation and dissemination activity; and sharing best practice at national and international levels. She is currently Vice Chair of the Guidelines international Network (GIN) public involvement group (G-I-N Public). International research she has contributed to includes the DECIDE project (http://www.decide-collaboration.eu) where she was involved in developing, evaluating and testing strategies to present guideline information to patients and the public.