Community Wellness and Health
As part of its core values, PCVS prioritises community health and wellbeing and believes that everyone deserves the best holistic health care and overall wellbeing possible regardless of their race, religion, political belief, economic or social background.
Health Research Project
The aims of the project were to increase awareness of, and participation in, health research amongst underrepresented communities; development of health networks between medical professionals and academics; decrease health inequalities amongst the general population. It linked medical professionals and researchers together better than before, meaning that research was not duplicated; researchers had better access to underrepresented communities for research and this is leading to a reduction in health inequalities; and communities were able to partake in health research to better improve their health outcomes.
Community Research Champions
PCVS, working with the Clinical Research Network, as part of the “REND 2” project, trained 17 individual Research Champions from 9 different community and faith groups. We trained the Research Champions over three sessions, so they understood health research, why and how it’s done, and why it is important for health research to reflect the diversity of our society, especially about health inequalities and improving health and social care services for all. The Research Champions had conversations with their communities to understand the barriers to research and worked with them to overcome these barriers to research participation. Their insights are valuable learning for researchers who are working with such communities.
Key Outcomes
Key outcomes included collaboration with Cambridge University Hospitals to devise a COPD research study aimed at south Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities; networking meeting between the community research champions, researchers, academics, health professionals, local authority; recruitment of underrepresented groups to a Dementia research study; continuing engagement events organised by the community research champions within their communities.
The community research champions listed these as positives from the project.
Learning about research, what to expect and who to go to
Gaining new knowledge
Being inclusive, hearing from minority communities
Being part of this group is like being part of a change.
Meeting new people
Talking to our communities and learning new information about them
The training was interesting
Trying to help people in the community
Raising awareness and promoting health research
Funding for the community organisations is positive and is an incentive, it helps to host meetings and put together information.
Current Research
You can check current Research and access our database of Research-based reports here