Nurturing Inclusive Research at NIHR Cambridge BRC

Vision

NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) aims to turn world-class science into diagnostics, treatments and preventative strategies that improve the lives of our patients and the wider population.  Fostering an inclusive research environment for our patients, our staff and those involved in our research is central to supporting the diverse community of ideas, expertise and outputs that underpin the quality and impact of our research.

The NIHR Cambridge BRC is a partnership between the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, funded by the NIHR and our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy  is closely aligned to these organisations, with a focus on the range of individuals who are involved in translational biomedical research. We also continue to build on the principles of the Athena Swan Charter and the Race Equality Charter.

We are committed to developing and sustaining equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in our research, working with our local communities to reduce health inequalities and ensuring that the results of our research are accessible to those who need them.

Values and objectives

• Everyone has a role to play: supporting EDI is not the work of a single individual; everyone has a role to play in creating an inclusive research environment and will be enabled to do so
• Leadership by example: as local and national leaders in health and research we will share best practice and promote EDI throughout the organisation including in the leadership team itself
• Improvement starts with understanding where our challenges lie: we will collect the data we need to understand where our local research environment fails to be diverse or inclusive and take appropriate action
• Building on best practice:  We will provide high quality, targeted training to support our staff to promote EDI across the many facets of research
• Learning and improving is an ongoing, iterative process: We will regularly review our progress and processes, embedding successful practice and investigating new avenues where interventions are not effective

Areas of Focus

• Ensuring diversity in BRC leadership and governance
• Making EDI central to our capacity building theme
• Identifying barriers within our research culture hindering inclusivity
• Supporting all patients to participate in research so that our research participants are reflective of our patient community
• Consciously recruiting, training and supporting our public involvement contributors to build a diverse community, supporting our researchers and participants
• Embedding processes to collect quality EDI data across all our processes and procedures and to build appropriate actions to address areas of need 

• April 2022 – The University of Cambridge School Of Clinical Medicine, based at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and part of the NIHR Cambridge BRC partnership, has been awarded the Athena Swan Charter Silver Award for another five years.