Preparing for co-creation: a roadmap for planning a co-creation initiative from a case study on sedentary behaviour in Scottish SMEs – a health CASCADE study

Objective: Co-creation is recognised as a promising approach for addressing complex health issues by collaborating with end-users to develop tailored solutions that meet their needs. Planning a co-creation initiative–resulting in a co-creation protocol–requires balancing between providing clear project details and the need for flexibility in co-creation. However, existing structured guidance necessary for effective co-creation planning in the literature does not exist. This study aimed to develop a practical co-creation planning roadmap for public health researchers and practitioners.
Study Design: Iterative development of an evidence-based co-creation planning roadmap based on case study reflections and expert input, and supported by existing co-creation literature.
Methods: The roadmap was developed based on the experience of applying the PRODUCES framework and principles of the planning phase by Leask and colleagues (2019) for planning a co-creation case study on reducing sedentary behaviour in Scottish companies. The roadmap underwent several rounds of iteration with the research team, incorporated feedback from researchers experienced with co-creation, and was further supported by the established evidence base of co-creation literature.
Results: The resulting roadmap has a seven-step approach, divided into four sections, involving: whether and why co-creation is an appropriate approach, framing the co-creation initiative (Section 1: Identify), defining stakeholders and co-creator sampling, describing resources and outcomes (Section 2: Define), structuring co-creation sessions, selecting methods for the co-creation sessions (Section 3: Structure) and planning for evaluation (Section 4: Plan Evaluation).
Conclusion: The roadmap offers a structured and accessible process to guide the planning of co-creation initiatives. We suggest that the roadmap be applied to different contexts to further refine and validate its utility, with the ultimate goal of enhancing the systematic planning of co-creation in public health.