More than 100 attendees came to the event at King's College London's Strand campus and discussed ways to address some the challenges in health and social care. The event included seminars and a poster marketplace showcasing previous research and opportunities to network.
Prof Rachel Allen, ARC South London capacity building theme lead welcomed attendees and gave an overview of the training and support for researchers, health and social care teams and community organisations.
Zoe Lelliot, co-deputy director, ARC South London and director, King’s Improvement Science gave an introduction to ARC South London and explained our aims of addressing problems faced by health and social care in areas that are important to our communities and helping local services offer excellent care based on sound evidence.
Photo: Panel discussion on sickle cell anaemia
Professor Claire Henderson, clinical professor of public mental health, King’s College London chaired the panel discussions:
Marie Clough highlighted that patients with sickle cell often have a lack of trust in the healthcare system due to bad experiences including a lack of understanding of the disease and the barriers to accessing the different services because the services are not joined up.
Angela Price-Rowe described the problems she has accessing care because her chronic pain is invisible.
Everyone looks at the outside and does not listen to what we say. Doctors repeatedly dismissed my health concerns.
Photo: panel discussion on chronic pain
Dr Di Aitken explained how the PEACs project worked with a Black-led organisation (Centric) to codesign the chronic pain pathway to better understand the issues and challenges within the healthcare system.
The final panel discussion focused on creating dialogue, building networks between researchers, practitioners and the public was chaired by Dr Nadine Fontaine-Paler, director, Mabadiliko and co-chaired by Prof Tushna Vandrevala, Kingston University.
The discussions highlighted important themes of amplifying community voices, reflecting lived experience, trust-building through the process of public involvement in research, researchers having diversity of thought and making sure their research is effectively solving the problem that you set out to do by involving the right voices
