Opportunity to help create arthritis research
‘Our Health’ aims to play a role in tackling the health inequalities that exist in society and works in partnership to use participatory action research to improve health research skills and empower patient and community groups to be active in health-related research.
About the team
‘Our Health’ uses the power of interdisciplinary research by creating research teams of patient and community partners, academic researchers, clinicians and health care professionals and undergraduate and postgraduate students from a wide variety of academic disciplines, such as engineering, medicine, biology and chemistry through to political sciences, psychology and global health.
These interdisciplinary research teams investigate ‘real world’ research questions around health and wellbeing that have been co-developed by our patient and community partners. The ‘Our Health’ programme provides rich experiential learning and up skills patient and community partners, as well as the wider research team, to contribute to a healthier, fairer and more sustainable future.
Background
‘Our Health’ have partnered with Versus Arthritis to create a new participatory action research project that invites a wide range of people living with arthritis to join a team of interdisciplinary academic researchers, clinicians, health care professionals and students, to co-develop a research question that relates to joint and bone disease and is of interest and value to people who are directly impacted by arthritis.
This new and exciting research project will allow people living with arthritis to become ‘active researchers’ in their own right. They will learn and develop research skills alongside team members and explore a research question that they have co-developed and feel strongly about.
Quality participatory action research requires commitment to developing, over the long term, strong team relationships, trust, respect and a robust and supportive research culture. This new initiative has been funded for 5 years by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) in collaboration with the large EPSRC transformational health care research project, InlightenUs. In doing so, funders and collaborators have provided the time and resources required to deliver a high quality, impactful, patient-led research project.
Participation
We are seeking people of black African heritage who have direct experience of living with or alongside a joint/bone condition (especially osteoarthritis) and would like to participate in this new research project,
- Do you have an interest in learning more about arthritis and how it affects you?
- Can you attend an online information session early December 2023?
- Can you attend online team research meetings 1 per month for 1 hour (12 hours over 1 year). Participants can leave the project at any time if they choose to do so. It is not expected that every monthly meeting is attended, circumstances may require some time away from participation.
Role
The key activities of the role are:
- To co-develop the research questions with black British university students to better understand arthritis from a patients’ point of view.
The types of skills we are looking for are:
- Teamwork and communication skills with an ability to listen to and respect differing opinions and constructively express your own views
- Desire to learn new knowledge about arthritis
- Ability to maintain confidentiality where required
We are looking to recruit a team with a mix of different skills and experience, and welcome interest from those who are new to research.
Training and Support
Participatory action research is a fun and engaging way to learn together within a team of mixed knowledge sets, interests and experiences. You do not need to have any specific training or knowledge to join the team other than a desire to learn and develop in this area and create new knowledge that could positively impact the lives of people living with a range of joint/bone conditions, particularly arthritis.
When you join the research team, we will start to learn together about which research questions are important to us and then we will think about how we could approach that research question using the research methodologies available to us.
All of our planning, thinking and testing will be supported by academics and research engagement professionals working at the Universities of Edinburgh, Southampton and Nottingham in a friendly and respectful way. We will build trusting supportive relationships with you and share our knowledge and expertise, as well as listening and learning from the unique knowledge and experiences you will bring to the research team.
The training and learning will take place online.
Benefits of Participation
- Actively researching a question of interest that has direct meaning and value for you
- Positively impacting the lives of people who live with arthritis joint/bone conditions
- Developing new skills and knowledge and create networks within academia
- Creating strong stimulating and rewarding research relationships
Expenses
This is a paid opportunity with a payment of £250 to recognise your participation. We can also offer support for any additional costs required to help you participate.
Timeline and recruitment process
If you are interested in joining this ‘Our Health’/Versus Arthritis research project please send an email stating your interest to Helen.Szoor-Mcelhinney@ed.ac.uk by Thursday 30th November 2023. If you would like to explore the opportunity further and would like to ask some questions you are very welcome to send an e mail to Dr Szoor-McElhinney Helen.Szoor-Mcelhinney@ed.ac.uk.