Establishing a Community of Practice for improved consideration of intersectionality in UK medical research (360G-Wellcome-351092_Z_26_Z)

This project will establish a Community of Practice (CoP) to advance intersectional equity in UK biomedical, health and care research. Building on policy outputs, educational materials and networks established by the Equity by Evidence and MESSAGE projects, this CoP will convene people with lived experience, funders, regulators, higher education institutions, academic publishers and researchers to drive coordinated improvement of intersectionality integration in research. The CoP is structured around four objectives: furthering implementation of equitable research policies across race, ethnicity, sex and gender; synthesising best practice evidence when accounting for disability, age and socioeconomic status in research, and the interactions between protected characteristics; monitoring policy impact through a sector-wide Equity Impact Assessment (EIA) framework to evaluate participation and outcomes; and generating educational materials and training to build capacity for embedding intersectionality in research design, data collection and reporting. CoP efforts will reduce fragmentation, streamline expectations of researchers and translate equity commitments into practice to strengthen research’s ability to improve health outcomes for all. Over three years, the CoP will deliver three Policy Labs and co-produced resources centred on stakeholder priorities and lived-experience expertise. Outputs include a scalable EIA framework, researcher training and sector-wide learning, to deliver measurable progress in research equity.