‘Equity, appropriateness and sustainability’ is one of CLAHRC West’s four research themes, and it informs both the research which we do and how we go about doing it. As part of this theme, in the past year we’ve had internal conversations about the issues relating to inequality or inequity that we’re coming across in the course of the projects we’ve been involved in. This was an exploratory, informal process, intended to inform plans for potential future work.
Early cross-cutting themes which emerged from these conversations included:
Missing data / voices / evidence: the data we don’t have, or we don’t take account of; voices that are missing, and gaps in the evidence we’re using
Unequal power relationships: this is clearly linked with the first theme, as those with more power are more likely to be able to influence what evidence is produced and used – in research, but also in decisions about which services are provided in our region, and how they are provided, as well as decisions about care at an individual level
Differential access – which again has clear connections to the other two
Various aspects of how we work as a CLAHRC were seen as strengthening our capacity to contribute to addressing health inequalities and inequities:
Sourcing much of our work via public calls
Working collaboratively
Having an in-house patient and public involvement team
The flexibility of programme (rather than project) based funding
The methodological flexibility and innovation which is possible within our multi-disciplinary team.
There was interest in improving our infrastructure for inclusion, such as:
Making it much easier to include people whose main language is not English
Simpler and equitable financial procedures for compensation of research participants and public / patient contributors
better support for our own staff who are engaging with people severely affected by health inequality and inequity
In June we held a public seminar in collaboration with People in Health West of England (PHWE), hosted by the Avon Primary Care Research Collaborative (APCRC), to discuss these themes, how we see the ways we have been working as a CLAHRC as helping us to address them, and what we can do more of or better in the future.