Campaign to promote equality in health research

Health researchers have been invited to become “early adopters” and introduce a new framework to improve diversity in study data.

They have been urged to join the ‘Equality in Research Matters’ campaign launched by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) East Midlands and Centre for Ethnic Health Research.

The initiative aims to promote inclusivity in health and social care research and starts with a webinar taking place on Thursday, December 14, focusing on how to go about making an Equality Impact Assessment (EqIA) in research a reality. The NIHR will soon be requiring researchers to carry out a EqIA for every study and this online seminar will build on a previous seminar on why Equality Impact Assessments are needed on all research activity.

An EqIA is an approach designed to improve equality analysis, practice and outcomes. It helps determine and understand how what we do may affect people differently. While it is a key part of the evidence that is needed to demonstrate compliance with the Equality Act’s Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), the most important outcome of this process is showing how individual research studies make a real difference to the lives of people from all communities.

Professor Marion Walker MBE, Emeritus Professor Stroke Rehabilitation and NIHR Emeritus Senior Investigator, who is the ARC EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) Committee Chair, said: “Excellent health and social care research-intensive organisations have a responsibility to ensure that research produced is designed in a way that gathers data from as diverse and inclusive a population as possible thereby producing results that are genuinely applicable to the wider population.

“ARC East Midlands is committed to embedding consideration of the needs of people who share the protected characteristics and others into its research, evaluation and review work. This will help to ensure that research meets the health needs of our diverse communities.”

The Centre for Ethnic Health Research works to address inequalities, associated with ethnicity, in health care access and health outcomes. We do this by supporting individuals and organisations to involve and understand the needs of ethnic minority and underserved communities when planning and undertaking research and healthcare delivery.

It is hosted by University of Leicester within ARC East Midlands, which is the lead ARC for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) of under-represented groups in research.

To register for the online seminar titled ‘Making Equality Impact Assessments in Research a Reality’, which will run between 1pm and 3pm, click here.