Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) is woven through every part of ARC West Midlands, relating to our research, our people and our impact. In an evolving EDI landscape, and with growing awareness of how research interacts with inequality, we are formalising our own approach.

Meet the team

Ameeta Retzer

Email: A.Retzer@bham.ac.uk

Ameeta is the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead, based at the University of Birmingham, and is also part of the ARC WM Public Health theme.

Anne-Marie Brennan

Email: A-M.Brennan@warwick.ac.uk

Anne-Marie is Programme Manager for ARC WM, and is based at the University of Warwick.

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Committee

The ARC WM EDI Committe is chaired by the EDI Lead. Committee members are representatives from each Research Theme, Patient & Public Involvement and Engagement, Training Capacity & Development, public contributors, the ARC WM Director, Programme Manager, and Head of Programme Delivery.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaborations (ARCs) support applied health and care research that responds to, and meets, the needs of local populations and local health and care systems. ARCs also undertake implementation research to increase the rate at which research findings are implemented into practice.

There is a growing understanding of the inequitable distribution of the benefits and risks of health research, systematically impacting on particular communities and resulting in poor health outcomes. This interacts with wider structural forces and exacerbates health inequalities. There is a role for ARCs to integrate principles of equity, diversity and inclusion within their function in order to generate high quality, impactful, relevant and insightful research outputs that are applicable to their local populations and beyond, and direct efforts towards and provide solutions to address systemic inequalities.

Inequalities are deeply embedded in many organisations and our society, impeding progress and achievement of excellence. Stigma, prejudice and discrimination are contributing factors, with structural racism, sexism, ableism and heteronormativity being widespread. Addressing these inequalities requires recognition, acknowledgement and action at multiple levels.

People from diverse backgrounds have historically been under-represented in the health and social care research talent pipeline. In addition to research participants, the NIHR has identified that the delivery of its Research Inclusion strategy will involve contribution and leadership relating to its professional services, research, and advisory workforce, and public contributors. Similarly, ARCs impact upon these stakeholders internally and interface with and influence their partners externally, including NHS providers, universities, charities, local authorities, Health Innovation Networks and other organisations. As such, the ARC West Midlands Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy must encompass both its diverse functions and broad reach. To learn more, you can read our strategy.

Resources

A growing collection of tools to help integrate EDI principles in research practice.

REP-EQUITY Toolkit

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have recently developed and released the REP-EQUITY toolkit, which aims to guide representative and equitable inclusion in clinical research.

REP-EQUITY paper, press release and video.

Patient & Public Involvement Webinar

This webinar, “How to incorporate Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in Patient and Public Involvement” covers what EDI is; barriers to incoporating EDI in PPI and how to overcome theme; and practical guidance, tips and resources on how to adapt a PPI programme to incorporate EDI successfully.

Research Design Service Toolkit

This EDI toolkit has been developed by the NIHR to support researchers to better understand how to embed EDI in research design and to meet the NIHR’s EDI requirements. Research Design Service Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit.

Patient Reported Outcomes

This paper published in Nature provides an overview of actions to promote representation and participation of under-served groups in patient reported outcomes.

Leading Lights Lecture

As part of the Warwick Medical School’s Leading Lights programme, Prof Amy Groveshe talks about how we can use evidence-based leadership to become collectively wise and avoid being collectively stupid. Surgical Research and Researching Surgery: Collective Wisdom and Collective Blindness.

GRADE-Equity Guidance Development

Guidance for guideline developers on how to consider health equity at key stages of the guideline development process.

Systematic Reviews

PROGRESS-Plus is a mnemonic used to identify characteristics that stratify health opportunities and outcomes.

Systematic reviews are an important source of evidence for health decision makers but have been found to lack assessments of the intervention effects on health equity. The PRISMA checklist consists of 27 items and is intended to improve transparency and reporting of systematic reviews. The equity extension for PRISMA (PRISMA-E 2012) helps identify, extract and synthesise evidence on equity in systematic reviews.

Inequity Assessment

The NIHR Health Inequality Assessment Tool includes questions that can help researchers assess whether the work they aim to carry out considers the causes of health inequalities, and has the maximum possible effect on reducing these.

The NIHR Equality Impact Assessment Tool is designed to improve equality analysis, practice and outcomes. It helps determine and understand how what we do may affect people differently.

Engaging Groups Under-Served by Research

The Future of Ageing. This is an ethical framework and recommendations for research and innovation related to ageing, produced by Nuffield Trust.

Good practice guide for researchers engaging with under-represented communities. This document from NHS England provides practical insights for researchers on how to engage more diverse participants in health research.

NIHR-INCLUDE Project. This guidance provides a good overview to encourage thinking about inclusion. It summarises what an under-served group is, a roadmap suggesting intervention points to improve inclusion, examples of under-served groups, and barriers to inclusion. It also provides a suggested framework of questions to guide the design and assess health and care research proposals.

INCLUDE Ethnicity Framework. This framework aims to help trial teams to think carefully about which ethnic groups should be included in their trial for the results to be widely applicable, and what challenges there may be in making this possible.

NIHR INCLUDE Impaired Capacity to Consent Framework. This tool allows researchers to ensure their trial is designed to be inclusive of people with impaired capacity to consent, as well as improving the quality of the trial design and funding applications.

NIHR BAME Toolkit. This toolkit aims to capture best practice and provide researchers with a framework on how to improve participation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups in health and social care research

Reporting Guidelines

SAGER Guidelines. The Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) Guidelines are a comprehensive procedure for reporting of sex and gender information in study design, data analysis, results and interpretations of findings. They are primarily designed to guide authors in preparing their manuscripts, but they are also useful for editors to integrate assessment of sex and gender in all manuscripts as an integral part of the editorial process.

CONSORT-Equity. This is an extension to the 2017 CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) statement that aims to improve the reporting of intervention effects in randomised trials where health equity is relevant.