Students support RCSLT’s work on addressing health inequalities

Students Rachel Bradley, Laura Mallaband and Fiona Murdoch spent one week with the RCSLT supporting our work on addressing health inequalities.

They spent time auditing current website information, researching the latest statistics on the prevalence and incidence of varied clinical conditions, and exploring the evidence base relating to potential areas of inequality in healthcare.

This information will be collated and shared as a resource, to support members to conduct a local needs assessment, which is one step that SLTs can take towards addressing potential health inequalities.

In addition to their project work, Rachel, Laura and Fiona were also behind the scenes on our exciting #SLThealthinequalities tweetchat which took place on 27 April, led by our @RCSLTPolicy colleagues.

It was great to hear members’ thoughts and experiences of addressing health inequalities in practice, and the role of the SLT. You can catch up by either checking out the hashtag, or taking a look at our wakelet of the chat.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Rachel, Laura, Fiona and their university tutor Melanie Packer for arranging and engaging in this placement.

In case you missed it, we also released a podcast on the same topic last month. Listen on SoundCloud or your favourite podcast app.

Get involved

We know lots of SLTs are doing fantastic work to reduce health inequalities. If you’re working on an initiative to reduce healthcare inequalities, why not enter yourself or your team into the Health Service Journal (HSJ) Awards 2022?

Watch this space for more RCSLT work on health inequalities later this year, including a webinar, an update to our guidance and new resources!

For more information or to get involved in any of these pieces of work, please email info@rcslt.org.