Health Equity Group

Versus Arthritis is committed to overcoming health inequity to benefit all people with arthritis and other MSK and long term health conditions. To support this work, we have launched a network of internal and external stakeholders interested in learning more about supporting health equity and tackling health inequity.

The initial purposes of the group are to:

• Hear and learn from individuals and organisations with experience of health inequity.
• Join up work happening internally and support work happening in other organisations.
• Review Versus Arthritis’ current practices and use insight to improve the way we do things going forwards.

We will continue to review these purposes to ensure they are fit for purposes and meet the aims of the group.

The Health Equity Group (HEG) meets once every 6 weeks via MS Teams, for 90 minutes in an evening. When you join the group, you will be added to an Outlook group, which will enable you to get meeting invites, for us to share information with you and for you to contact the other members of the group. There is no requirement to attend every meeting, but you are encourage to stay engaged with the email content and attend when you can.

We are always keen to add more healthcare professionals and people with lived experience of MSK care to the group. For more information or express your interest in joining the group, please email professionalengagement@versusarthritis.org. For patient members, we also offer a bursary to support up to 5 members to attend the meetings. Please see below for more information.

We are looking for people with experience of an MSK condition and lived experience of health inequity to share their passion, knowledge and experiences and to provide ‘check and challenge’ to our thinking and ways of working.

We recognise that factors which would cause a person to experience health inequity may also create a barrier to attending voluntary groups such as this. In order to help overcome some of these barriers and enable Patient Members of the Health Equity Group to attend we offer an optional bursary of £200/year for up to 5 members. The first payment (£100) will be paid on successful appointment to the group and the second payment (£100) will be made after 6 months subject to appropriate engagement with the group.

Our expectations of the Patient HEG members are:

• To attend 50% of the sessions although they are welcome to attend as many as they can make.
• Will have an awareness of all documents shared as part of the agenda for all meetings.
• Share knowledge, feelings and experiences to help shape the discussion and work of the group.

The term of the membership/bursary will be 1 year. This is a pilot project and so the impact of these funds will need to be reviewed before committing to any further bursary funding.

We are currently accepting expressions of interest until 17 September 2021. To register your interest, please complete this Expression of Interest form.

For more information please see the HEG Patient Member advert (PDF, 85 KB) or contact professionalengagement@versusarthritis.org.