Recruiting Individuals with Lived Experience

This guide highlights questions to consider and discuss as a team before recruiting individuals with lived experience from outside of your organization to be a part of a health and human services program or policy effort. We use lived experience to mean knowledge based on someone’s perspective, personal identities, and history, beyond their personal or educational experience. People with lived experience are those directly affected by social, health, public health, or other issues and by the strategies that aim to address those issues. This gives them insights that can inform and improve research, policies, practices, and programs. It may not be necessary to answer each question, depending on your context. The team should consider what constitutes a satisfactory response to a question before initiating outreach.