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Professor Anne MacFarlane’s research is transforming how migrants – people who move across international borders – are involved in health research and in the development of health services and policy.
As Director of a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Participatory Health Research with Refugees and Migrants at ɫƵ’s School of Medicine, she promotes participatory health research as a core approach to migration health. This work strengthens migrant involvement in research design, evidence use, and policy development, ensuring that their experiences and needs shape decisions about their health services nationally and internationally.
Beneficiaries
Migrants (including refugees, beneficiaries of temporary protections, economic migrants and students), health policymakers, healthcare providers, interpreters, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academic researchers, World Health Organization (WHO), Health Service Executive (HSE), Department of Health (DoH).
Description of the impact
Professor Anne MacFarlane’s work is shifting primary care research culture toward approaches that involve migrants with researchers rather than research done on, to, or for them. Her research is widely accessed and internationally recognised; in 2025, she was named one of the world's top 2% of scientists and is one of the most cited and influential researchers in her field. She has citations in 111 countries.
Through Participatory World Café projects with Limerick-based community organisations Limerick City Partnership (formerly Paul Partnership) and Doras, MacFarlane’s work has impacted on migrants’ involvement in decisions about health research priorities (Source: MacFarlane et al., 2017; and Phelan et al., 2021). As technical advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) on participatory processes, working with UL’s Professor Ailish Hannigan (then School of Medicine; now Head of Mathematics and Statistics), she has also ensured migrant participation in developing priorities for the WHO’s first global research agenda (Source: WHO report).
Her participatory learning and action research has centred migrants’ voices in the selection and implementation of health interventions in primary care to improve health equity in Ireland (Source: Roura et al., 2021) and in European primary care services (Source: Lionis et al., 2015; Tuenissen et al., 2017).
She is recognised for involving migrants in the dissemination of research as co-authors of conference presentations and peer-reviewed articles, including a recent publication in the world-leading Lancet medical journal (MacFarlane et al., 2024). Her research has also shaped knowledge mobilisation by ensuring migrants play a direct role in how evidence is used. As academic lead for Ireland’s first national platform for improving refugee and migrant involvement in public health policy – the Department of Health funded Refugee and Migrant Health Partnership (2023-2027) – she is co-designing culturally attuned structures and events that support evidence-informed policy.
Working with Professor Helen Phelan, the Director of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at ɫƵ, and Doras, this partnership places particular emphasis on the Irish World Music Café method. This method uses music and singing to create a participatory space for refugees and migrants to co-produce knowledge for research and advocacy. In close collaboration with the national Public and Patient Involvement Network, this method was used in PPI INCLUDES to coproduce a vision and action plan for enhancing refugee and migrant involvement in health research as public and patient partners (Source: MacFarlane et al., 2023).
Her sustained commitment to knowledge transfer and advocacy has generated impacts that extend beyond academia. Migrants who have worked as community researchers have reported personal and professional benefits, including increased confidence, new employment opportunities, and expanded networks (van den Muijsenbergh; Garry et al., 2025). NGOs have gained improved access to evidence about migration health in Ireland to support advocacy through a publicly available This database, coproduced with NGO Doras and Cairde, has been added as the first case study from Ireland to the .
This complements other work that MacFarlane has done with WHO to produce a WHO Technical Guidance for Member States. The guidance provides information to Member States about what participatory health research is, and how to implement it meaningfully and effectively. Thus, her work has strengthened WHO’s capacity to deliver community-informed health policy and positioned Ireland as an international model for integrating migrant voices in health decision-making.
Evidence of impact
1. Commendation by community researcher Anna Papyan from Shannon Family Resource Centre
Commendation for a positive co-design experience in participatory health research with MacFarlane’s group on ethnicity data collection, which contributed to policy and service changes in Ireland.
“It was a meaningful and empowering experience. The process was based on mutual respect, trust and partnership. The projects gave space for migrants’ and refugees’ voices to be heard and valued, and they were not just research subjects but co-authors in shaping the research questions, priorities and actions”
2. Designation of ɫƵ as a WHO Collaborating Centre for Migrant Public and Patient Involvement (PPI)
This designation is one of only three globally, in recognition of MacFarlane’s leadership.
WHO is delighted to work with ɫƵ, whose expertise in primary healthcare and participatory health research contributes greatly to our migration health programme. Their attention to cultural aspects of migration is important, and their expertise in building meaningful partnerships with NGOs and Ministries of Health is inspiring. We see a rising need for academic collaborations such as this at a time of great global uncertainty about migration. WHO looks forward to future and extended collaborations with UL to support WHO goals for equity for migrants’ health.
Kristina Mauer-Stender, WHO Europe, Copenhagen
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3. Implementation of the HRB national PPI Ignite Network, PPI INCLUDES action plan (MacFarlane et al., 2023)
The HRB National PPI Ignite Network currently comprises almost 150 members, with new organisations and individuals joining on a monthly basis.
The PPI INCLUDES Project using the music café method won the inaugural Spark and Shift Award at the European Implementation Event, Newcastle, June 2025. The award recognises and celebrates contributions to implementation science that help ignite new ideas and lead to a change in perspective and understanding.
An academic paper co-authored by MacFarlane with academic and community partners Helen Phelan and Ahmed Hassan, examining the use of the music café method within the PPI INCLUDES project, was published in May 2025. As of December 2025, the paper has been accessed 1,306 times and has achieved an Altmetric score of 18.
4. Global reach and recognition of Professor MacFarlane’s research:
- 80.83% of publications are open access
- Field-weighted citation index: 1.6 (60% above global average)
- Citations in 111 countries
Source: SciVal analysis (2024)
Research description
Since 2002, Professor Anne MacFarlane has led interdisciplinary projects funded by the Health Research Board, the Irish Research Council, the Health Service Executive, the Department of Health and the European Union. These projects were co-designed with migrants, NGOs, interpreters, GPs and HSE colleagues. They focused on generating evidence about how healthcare systems can be adapted to meet the needs of migrants from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Examples include studies on then implementation of trained interpreters and ethnicity data collection in primary care services.
A consistent thread across these projects is Professor MacFarlane’s investigation of what methodologies enable migrants to be meaningfully involved in research co-design. These investigations have shown that standard research and knowledge-translation methods are insufficient for co-design goals. Her research highlights the need for novel, participatory, and culturally attuned approaches. Studies of interactive and visual-verbal methods – such as the Participatory World Cafés and Participatory Learning and Action research – demonstrate how these approaches foster dialogue, sustain engagement and support shared learning between migrants and others involved in co-design processes. Recent findings also highlight the potential of music and singing as methods that support migrant leadership within co-design processes.
Research outputs
- The second National Refugee and Migrant Health Seminar (December 2024) was a major event that brought refugees and migrants, academics, healthcare providers, and colleagues from the HSE and Department of Health together for dialogue on evidence-based policy and practice to optimise the health of this population. [UL hosts refugee and migrant health networking and knowledge exchange seminar | ɫƵ]
The pioneering work led by Professor MacFarlane on the need for a paradigm shift towards participatory health research in the field of migration health, and on the role of arts-based methods including music and singing, was published in a peer-reviewed Special Series of the world-leading Lancet journal: MacFarlane, A., Huschke, S., Marques, M.J., Gama, A., Kinaan, W., Hassan, A., Papyan, A., Phelan, H., Severoni, S., Kumar, B. and Dias, S., (2024).
Normalising participatory health research approaches in the WHO European region for refugee and migrant health: a paradigm shift. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, 38, p.100847. Available at:
- Guidance provided to WHO by MacFarlane, in collaboration with Professor Ailish Hannigan, led to the involvement of refugees and migrants from civil society organisations ensuring that their priorities were included in the WHO’s first global research priority plan for refugees and migrants in 2023.
- Evidence on the value of Participatory World Café methods in primary care research with refugees and migrants was published in a leading primary care peer reviewed journal.
MacFarlane, A., Galvin, R., O’Sullivan, M., McInerney, C., Meagher, E.*, Burke, D.* and LeMaster, J.W. (2017)
‘Participatory methods for research prioritization in primary care: an analysis of the World Café approach in Ireland and the USA’, Family Practice, 34(3), 278–284. Available at:
- The novel use of participatory learning and action research guidelines was published in a leading peer-reviewed medical journal.
O’Reilly-de Brún, M., MacFarlane, A., de Brún, T., Okonkwo, E., Bonsenge-Bokanga, J.S., Bradley, C., Galvin, R. and Phelan, M., (2016).
Involving migrants in the development of guidelines for communication in cross-cultural general practice consultations: a participatory learning and action research project. BMJ Open, 6(9), p.e009647. Available at:
Research grants
EU RESTORE (2011-2015)
Principal Investigator: Professor Anne MacFarlane
Duration: April 2011 – March 2015
Grant Number: 257258
Grant Value: €2,990,590.20
Health Research Board EMIC IC Study (2017-2020)
Principal Investigator: Professor Anne MacFarlane
Duration: 2015 – 2018
Grant Number: HRA-PHR-2015-1344
Grant Value: €329,946.00
Health Research Board (HRB) and Irish Research Council (IRC)
Principal Investigator: Professor Anne MacFarlane
Duration: 3 years, 2 months (2017 – 2020)
Grant Number: HRB PPI-2017-009
Grant Value: €261,682
Irish Research Council (IRC) PPI INCLUDES: Public and Patient Involvement to include refugees and other migrants in health research (in partnership with Doras)
Principal Investigator: Professor Anne MacFarlane
Duration: 1 year (2022 – 2023)
Grant Number: NF/2022/39186433
Grant Value: €12,000
Department of Health Refugee and Migrant Health Partnership
Principal Investigator: Anne MacFarlane
Duration: 2023-2027
Grant Number: n/a
Grant Value: €600,000
