Race Equity Month – EDI as a golden thread: The work of our Strategic Policy Groups

by Namita Srivastava, Policy Officer

The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda is more pressing than ever in healthcare education, aimed at fostering fair representation, accessibility, and justice for all members of the community, including both educators and students.  The Council currently has four Strategic Policy Groups (SPGs), including one on EDI, but the SPGs ensure EDI runs as a golden thread across all our work. Equality and equity, ensuring that everyone is treated fairly, by removing barriers to participation for all groups in society, is imperative to our members and their students. Diversity is about valuing the range of backgrounds and differences between people. Inclusion is where these differences between people and groups are seen as positive, and where the validity of varying perspectives are promoted.

Our EDI SPG has led on anti-racism work for a number of years. This year, much work has been done on racism in student practice. The group has also looked at flexibility on placements, and the use of simulation to teach about anti-racism in mental health services. It is currently looking at the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on students. The Council will look at ways to address health inequalities by promoting the All our Health programme, which is a wide collection of e-learning resources on critical public health topics for people who work in the health and care sector and the extended public health workforce. The resources aim to prevent illness, protect health, promote wellbeing and reduce health inequalities.

Over the last year, the Regulation SPG has applied an EDI lens to explore challenges around student disability declarations and inequities in fitness to practise (FtP) procedures. Working in partnership, Andrea Cameron (Chair of the EDI SPG) and Sharon Arkell (Co-Chair of the Regulation SPG) have gathered insights from members on the opportunities and challenges involved in personalising the learner journey and implementing reasonable adjustments. Initial findings were presented at the Advanced HE NET conference last year, and at our Summer Conference 2024. The next step is to gather quantitative data through a member survey to better understand the scope and scale of the challenges. This work will help us identify the key issues and advanced more inclusive student FtP procedures. Additionally, it will build awareness and promote consistency in how universities implement meaningful adjustments, fostering a more equitable learning environment for all students.

Our Research and Innovation Conference in February incorporated an EDI lens into the session on ‘Overcoming challenges in research roles’, discussing inequalities and barriers faced by nurses, midwives and AHPs navigating careers in research.

In addition, the Clinical Academic Roles Implementation Network (CARIN) has an EDI commitment and principles which are intended to be embedded into all of its work including all sub-group portfolios. It also aims to promote equitable, accessible, and inclusive research environments and roles, contributing to health equity agendas. CARIN is currently appointing a Deputy Chair for its EDI work and along with CARIN Chair, Professor Jane Coad, and the whole membership; CARIN wants to be a voice for change for the clinical academic research sector.

In UK healthcare higher education, innovation and pedagogy is increasingly being shaped by an EDI thread. Technologies like simulation and blended learning have reduced barriers to healthcare careers, enabling students from diverse backgrounds to access and engage with educational content regardless of geographic, financial, or personal barriers. Our Post-Pandemic Progress report, published in May this year, highlights that scenario-based simulated learning can promote culturally competent care by creating controlled environments that can expose students to diverse clinical scenarios. Future work with the Innovation and Pedagogy SPG will explore how HEIs can embed EDI principles into curriculum design to help create a more inclusive and equitable learning experience for all students.

We are working to embed EDI more into the workstreams of the SPGs and will ensure this is built into the work agenda that is currently being developed for the year ahead.