Reducing health inequalities and engaging diverse communities

Hearing the voices of people with lived experience and engaging more diverse communities are crucial to understanding and tackling the causes of health inequalities and inequity.

We are increasingly taking a structured approach to co-designing and co-producing our work programmes, leveraging our valuable position embedded within our local health and care systems with links to industry and academia to give a voice to marginalised and seldom heard communities.

This year we gained valuable insights through focused pilots of resources co-produced with patients to encourage the uptake of Structured Medication Reviews in seldom-heard communities.

1,132

young people took part in the ERIC Young Champions research

540

people are now members of our South West Learning Disability Collaborative

 

1,650

Structured Medication Reviews completed with those in marginalised communities through our national Polypharmacy programme

331

health and care professionals have now joined our Black Maternity Matters community

South West Learning Disability Collaborative

Since 2019 our Learning Disability Collaborative has brought together people from a wide range of sectors and backgrounds, all with a shared commitment of improving the health outcomes of people with a learning disability.

We initially focused on using the National Early Warning Score (NEWS2) and soft-signs tools such as RESTORE2 and increasing uptake of annual health checks and flu vaccinations.

After notable successes, the expanded South West Learning Disability Collaborative was created in 2022 to cover the entire region and has grown to 540 members.

Highlights for the collaborative in 2024-25 include workshops on improving lung health, the co-production of resources on dementia, and working with colleagues across the region and NHS England to develop training to support healthy weight in people with a learning disability.

You can read more about the South West Learning Disability Collaborative here.

These webinars are a brilliant way to share best practice and improve care and services offered to people.

South West Learning Disabilities Collaborative member

Black Maternity Matters

Challenge

Black women are four times more likely to die during pregnancy or in the postnatal period than White women, while stillbirth rates for Black babies are over twice those for White babies. This is a major patient safety issue.

Black Maternity Matters has been designed to help tackle the significant and unacceptable disparities in maternal health outcomes faced by Black mothers and their babies in the UK.

Approach

In 2021 we established the Black Maternity Matters collaborative with Representation Matters, BCohCo and Black Mothers Matter.

Our aim is to confront these inequalities by providing anti-racist training and support to perinatal staff, empowering them to deliver safer, more equitable care and ultimately reduce these life-threatening disparities.

Result

With 331 members, the Black Maternity Matters collaborative continues to go from strength to strength. Now onto our fourth cohort, our programme has evolved iteratively in response to learning and insights gathered from participants and course leaders during each phase.

In 2024 we introduced a specific cohort for senior leaders, recognising that healthcare professionals are limited to how much change they can activate without senior leadership advocacy.

In March 2025 we won the award for ‘Community Project Impact’ at the prestigious Black Maternal Health Awards in London.

You can read more about Black Maternity Matters here.

Black Maternity Matters is a testament to the power of truly meaningful interdisciplinary collaboration. We have demonstrated how you can build something bigger than the sum of individual parts and that change is possible and coming.

Sonah Paton Managing Director of Black Mothers Matter

Hearing the voices of young people with bowel and bladder conditions

Challenge

One in nine children in the UK live with a bowel or bladder condition. This can have an enormous impact on their lives, affecting both physical and mental health and disrupting their day-to-day lives and their education.

Talking about these conditions and their impact can be difficult. It’s often an extremely sensitive topic.

From our work on the Voices for Change project in 2021-22 with Bristol Health Partner’s Bladder and Bowel Health Integration Team (BABCON HIT), we realised the voice of children and young people was all too often being missed, increasing the risk of widening health inequalities.

Approach

We supported the Bristol-based children’s bowel and bladder charity ERIC to better understand the specific challenges faced by young people. The ambition was to open conversations and lay the groundwork to initiate positive and enduring change, with the potential to make a real difference to people’s lives.

Working with the Participation People, ERIC’s Young Champions (a group of young people aged 12 to 19 with lived experience of bowel and bladder conditions) carried out the research with other young people across the UK.

Result

1,132 young people took part in the ERIC Young Champions research. The findings were published in January 2025, revealing that nearly half were not allowed to use the toilet during lessons, while a quarter said they were scared to use the toilets at school.

Anti-social behaviour around toilets is causing many schools to shut them during lesson times. Shame and stigma around toileting are causing over a third of young people to avoid drinking water during the day so they don’t need to go at school.

The ‘Voices for Change’ report includes problem statements that can be shared with the sector and innovators to suggest improvements to existing information, services and pathways, and guide thinking around developing or identifying innovative solutions.  You can read more about the report’s key findings and link directly to it here.

Young people’s voices aren’t often heard on the subject of school toilets. The ERIC Young Champions have done amazingly well to capture such rich and expansive survey data from young people. We have been told, loud and clear, that change is desperately needed.

Siân Wicks CEO of ERIC, The Children’s Bowel & Bladder Charity

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