Box 1 Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) and stakeholder consultation process to identify critical topics

In March 2020, Bradford’s Covid-19 Scientific Advisory Group was formed to support policy and decision makers in Bradford and the UK to deliver an effective urgent response and to better understand the wider societal impacts of Covid-19. As part of these aims, a rapid community and stakeholder engagement process was used to identify priority topics important to both citizens in Bradford and local decision makers. This process took place in April 2020 via the following engagement activities:

 1. The first author spoke to nine members of Bradford’s District Gold Command (established in response to the Covid-19 emergency). These were brief 15–20 min phone calls to assess their top Covid-19 priorities

 2. Analysis of the first 350 free text responses to the Born in Bradford Covid-19 adult questionnaire. This survey was undertaken during the initial weeks of first lockdown to assess what the main concerns were for parents in the district

 3. Community researchers collected soft intelligence (comprised of informal phone conversations asking about current community concerns around Covid-19) from 13 people considered influential within diverse community settings

From the above, three priority topic areas for qualitative work were identified: (1) “health beliefs” encompassed: access to healthcare services, experiences of Covid-19, sources of health information and the spread of misinformation, (2) adolescent mental well-being during the lockdown which is the subject of this paper and (3) people living in poverty before Covid-19. Data was collected and analysed on all three topics. The intelligence and evidence obtained from investigating these priority topics was rapidly shared at a local level and influenced Bradford’s public health response [42]