Yvonne Pelling: Growing Bacteria in My House

Yvonne Pelling is the Patient and Community Engagement Lead at PASSERELLE, the SPOR National Training Entity — Canada's national hub for capacity development in patient-oriented research. She came into the field through Access Open Minds, a youth mental health service design project, and she's spent the years since arguing that collaboration isn't a value you hold, it's a skill you practice badly until you don't.We get into what changes when patients, clinicians, policymakers, and community members stop being research participants and start being research partners. Yvonne also walks me through PhotoVoice — handing teenagers iPads and tripods and asking them what youth mental health transformation actually looks like — and her current pie-in-the-sky project: growing bioluminescent bacteria to study collaboration as a living system. Yes, it started in her house. Yes, her kids complained about the smell.Key Moments* Participant versus partner, and why the difference is the whole field* Why patient-oriented research bans acronyms and jargon, and what a Jargon Buster is* PhotoVoice with 100 participants across nine sites, ages 13 to 29* Why arts-based methods pull richer answers than surveys and focus groups* Growing bacteria at home before moving it to a lab, and what light has to do with teamingThe TakeawayThe hardest thing about collaboration is the self. Not the schedule, not the funding, not the other people — the ego that needs to be seen, and the discipline to give space instead of take it.Guest LinksPasserelle NTE: https://passerelle-nte.ca/Access Open Minds: search "Access Open Minds" and "PhotoVoice Plus" to explore the project onlineJo's book, Scarlet Shadows: https://amzn.to/4wJk4ccAs an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell