Partnerships for Social Justice

Start date: Feb 5th 2020
End date: Ongoing
Value: £14,920.71
Partners and collaborators: Inequalities Research Network, Health Inequalities Research Network, Equal England and Leeds Equality Network, HERON
Funder:ESRC IAA
Primary investigator: Ghazala Mir
Co-investigators: Victoria McGowan and Sarah Salway, Equal England Network Charlotte Woodhead and Stephani Hatch, Health Inequalities Research Network, Kings College London Sarah Irwin, and Karen Lucas, Inequalities Research Network, University of Leeds Sharon Moore, Leeds Equality Network, Leeds Clinical Commissioning Group Karen Vinall-Collier and Abigail Turner, Raised in Yorkshire, University of Leeds.

Description

Our partnership brings together four equity-focused Networks that will collaborate to explore how to reduce inequalities through work with public services, community organisations and academics. The Inequalities Research Network, Health Inequalities Research Network, Equal England and Leeds Equality Network all bring together academic, voluntary sector, policy and public sector staff interested in improving health and wellbeing and addressing social factors that contribute to disadvantage and social exclusion.

We will develop ideas for future research on a) how to improve public understanding about the social causes of inequality and b) how to increase leadership on equity in public services and within disadvantaged communities. We will also train organisations who can support disadvantaged communities to conduct research about the inequalities experienced within the community.

We aim to achieve concrete benefits from this work, including:

• greater public and professional awareness of how public service institutions can reduce inequalities

• new collaborations between Networks and organisations to develop further research

• research skills in groups that experience inequalities

• development of existing training materials for use in diverse contexts and disadvantaged groups

• publications on the activities by students in the University of Leeds School of Dentistry

Impact

Capacity building and skills development amongst different groups of stakeholders will be facilitated through a series of workshops, two of which took place in summer 2020 and the rest to occur in autumn 2020. Specific anticipated impacts on those involved are:

Increased awareness of inequity issues relevant to their work and to the lived experience of people in disadvantaged populations.that can impact on policy and practice
Involvement in work to develop research /evaluation questions and measures for change that are relevant to users of research (including key decision-makers)
Contributions to research plans that address these questions, identify potential sources of data and support analysis/interpretation
Contributions to development of dissemination plans that aim to influence public service leaders/decision-makers

For the proposal development work additional benefits include opportunities to be involved as research sites and develop new engagements that can contribute to policy and practice development as well as to reduced health and social inequalities.

For the toolkit development work additional benefits include:

a. greater confidence among members of disadvantaged populations, and organisations that support them, in exploring community health issues and developing ideas for research
b. support to practice verbal presentations of research plans (and findings if appropriate) to key stakeholders
c. opportunities for Masters’ students in the University of Leeds School of Dentistry and others involved in the pilots to publish results from the work with support from academics

Downloads

Read more about the work of Partnerships for Social Justice through our workshop presentations and outputs. A link to our final workshop, held on November 19th 2020 may be found here.