Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance
Influencing policy and care together for best lifelong musculoskeletal health
Guest blog by Chantal Lyons. This essay was the national selection entry winner for the UK for the Edgar Stene Prize 2022
Everything changed in the year I turned twenty-three. In the spring, I began to run, dragging my unfit body off the sofa and into the local park. In the summer, I began to dream of running the London Marathon like my father had. And in the autumn, I could no longer ignore the white-hot pain growing in my hips and back.…
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by Karen Middleton, chief executive of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy
The chief medical officer’s recommendation to strengthen on at least two days of the week is sometimes referred to as ‘the forgotten guideline’. It is frequently overlooked in favour of its more aerobic activity-based cousin, not least by healthcare professionals. As a consequence, too few people meet the guideline despite it being critical for quality of life and particularly for people living with a long-term condition.
The pandemic, which brought high levels of inactivity during lockdowns and other changes in behaviour, has exacerbated what is becoming known in healthcare circles as ‘the deconditioning challenge’. …
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Guest blog by Dr Arash Angadji, Chief Executive, Orthopaedic Research UK
I was talking to a PhD student who has recently received one of our fellowship grants to research the use of statistical modelling to help better predict patient outcomes, who told me, ‘I am part of that generation that has grown up with computers, so It feels natural to ask how we can we exploit this technology. We are all getting more on board with the idea of smart technology and wearable devices and questioning why we are not applying these technologies to our patients.’…
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Looking differently at leisure places as spaces for chronic pain managementby Ben Wilkins, CEO, Good Boost
15.5 million people in England live with chronic pain. Approximately 5.5 million (12% of the population) have high-impact chronic pain, where pain makes it an on-going challenge to take part in daily activities (Versus Arthritis, 2021). The main contributing factor for 8-in-10 people living with chronic pain are musculoskeletal conditions, such as osteoarthritis, back and neck pain. For people living with this, it’s not just a ‘ache in your back’ or a ‘twinge in your knee’, it’s an unrelenting and all-consuming part of everyday life.…
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by Adanna Williams, BestMSK Health Collaborative, Deputy Director
This week many of us are returning to work or starting our first week of 2022 having had a difficult Christmas period supporting and delivering services. I am mindful that the impact of focusing efforts to combat the Omicron variant has the potential to widen health inequalities. I have acknowledged how challenging this can be for those who need to access our services and those who are awaiting interventions.
In the BestMSK Healthcare Collaborative programme (an NHS England and Improvement programme), equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) continues to be a key priority.…
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Guest Blog by Professor Tony Woolf, Acting Chair and Secretary, Cornwall Arthritis Trust
Cornwall is well known for its coastline, beaches and mixture of rugged countryside with wooded valleys, great gardens and wonderful vistas. Poldark county. A visitor’s paradise but it has all the problems of rural and coastal communities with an economic dependency on agriculture and tourism and a low pay economy. Economic hardship is not immediately obvious but there are Cornish estates that rank among the highest in the league tables for multiple deprivation, and it is one of only two regions of the UK that was eligible for special assistance from Brussels as a result of having incomes per head less than 75% of the EU average.…
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Guest blog by Stephen Mack-Smith BSc, DC, MRCC. MEAC
Chair, North Wales ARMA
I received a letter about 14 years ago from my professional association looking for volunteers to join an umbrella group of patients and professionals with an interest in MSK problems. Funding for three years came from the English NHS, and fortune had it that owing to lobbying from North West Wales professionals within ARMA, a Pilot ARMA Network Group was formed in March 2007. It was the only one in Wales.…
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What is the roadmap for improving musculoskeletal health in London?Personal view from Ian Bernstein, Clinical Director for Musculoskeletal Health, NHS England and NHS Improvement, London Region.
The Best MSK Health collaborative at NHS England brings together providers and people with lived experience to “enable best MSK health for all”. [1] The programme formally launched in February 2021 as we were riding the second COVID wave; and the timing is significant. We have known for many years that musculoskeletal problems are the largest cause of years lived with a disability in the UK.…
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Guest blog by Dr Michelle Farr, Research Fellow at University of Bristol and the National Institute for Health Research Applied Research Collaboration West (NIHR ARC West)
People who experience long-term pain have important insights and strategies that help them manage pain in everyday life. However, they are often not invited to share their knowledge and skills to inform the services that are meant to support them. ARMA has been highlighting the importance of working in partnership with patients and how co-production, where patients and professionals work together, can improve pain services.…
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Guest blog by Claire Little, PhD researcher at Centre for Epidemiology Versus Arthritis, University of Manchester
People living with arthritis and chronic pain conditions know that pain is a fluctuating and unpredictable symptom 1. This can cause uncertainty and fear about the future severity of pain 2. I am working on a project to build a ‘pain forecast’ that would provide predictions of future pain. Like the weather forecast, or economic forecasts, this aims to produce predictions about pain in the near future.…
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