Including People With Lived Experience in Research From Design to Publication: The Next Steps for the IJIC Community

In a recent article by Michgelsen et al. (2025) [1], a key insight emerged from a decade of research published in the International Journal of Integrated Care (IJIC): while the ambition to co-produce integrated care with people is widely stated, the reality often reflects a top-down approach of integrated care onto individuals.This discrepancy is not limited to practice and policy-it permeates the research landscape as well.The resulting gap risks producing research that does not respond to the users' needs and fails to generate the evidence required to create truly person-centred care.In this editorial, we aim to highlight the challenges and opportunities of co-producing research with people with lived experience, drawing on discussions and outcomes from a workshop held at ICIC25 and the longer journey IJIC has been on for the past 3 years.