Research Article Ethical Use and Impact of Participatory Approaches to Research in Post-Disaster Environments: An Australian Bushfire Case Study L. Gibbs , 1,2 K. Block, 1 C. MacDougall, 1,3 L. Harms, 4 E. Baker, 1 J. Richardson, 1,5 G. Ireton, 1 H. C. Gallagher, 6,7 R. Bryant, 8 D. Lusher, 6 P. Pattison, 9 J. Watson, 10 J. Gillett, 11 A. Pirrone, 1 R. Molyneaux, 1 S. Sexton-Bruce, 12 and D. Forbes 13 1 Jack Brockhof Child Health and Wellbeing Program, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia 2 Centre for Disaster Management and Public Safety, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia 3 College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia 4 Department of Social Work, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia 5 Emergency Services, Australian Red Cross, Carlton, Victoria, Australia 6 Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia 7 Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia 8 School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 9 Department of Education, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 10 North-East Primary Care Partnership, West Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia 11 Australian Rotary Health, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia 12 Department of Health and Human Services, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 13 Phoenix Australia-Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health and Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia Correspondence should be addressed to L. Gibbs; lgibbs@unimelb.edu.au Received 29 September 2017; Accepted 15 April 2018; Published 11 June 2018 Academic Editor: Susanne Hartung Copyright © 2018 L. Gibbs et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Tis paper presents a case study of Beyond Bushfres, a large, multisite, mixed method study of the psychosocial impacts of major bushfres in Victoria, Australia. A participatory approach was employed throughout the study which was led by a team of academic investigators in partnership with service providers and government representatives and used on-site visits and multiple methods of communication with communities across the state to inform decision-making throughout the study. Te ethics and impacts of conducting and adapting the approach within a post-disaster context will be discussed in reference to theories and models of participatory health research. Te challenges of balancing local interests with state-wide implications will also be explored in the description of the methods of engagement and the study processes and outcomes. Beyond Bushfres demonstrates the feasibility of incorporating participatory methods in large, post-disaster research studies and achieving rigorous fndings and multilevel impacts, while recognising the potential for some of the empowering aspects of the participatory experience to be reduced by the scaled-up approach. 1. Introduction Tere are many diferent forms of participatory health research (PHR) but the shared principle is that “research is not done on people as passive subjects providing data but with them to provide relevant information for improving their lives. Te entire research process is viewed as a partnership between stakeholders...” [1]. Tis aims to ensure that the people whose lives or work are the subject of the study have a Hindawi BioMed Research International Volume 2018, Article ID 5621609, 11 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/5621609