Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance
Influencing policy and care together for best lifelong musculoskeletal health
This new resource
Social prescribing improves outcomes for people by giving more choice and control over their lives. It is effective at targeting the causes of health inequalities and is particularly useful for people who need more support with their mental health, have one or more long-term conditions, are lonely or isolated, and/or have complex social needs that affect their wellbeing.…
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Designing care for people living with both mental health problems and persistent back and neck pain
by Jenna Collins, Marketing and Communications Manager, Q Labs, The Health Foundation
In September 2018, the Q Improvement Lab (part of the Health Foundation) and Mind embarked on a year-long collaboration to understand how care can be improved across mental health and persistent back and neck pain.
The Q Lab and Mind have recently shared the first insights from 
this work, drawing on the experiences of over 100 collaborators to give an overview of why this challenge warrants attention and promising opportunities to improve care.…
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23 July 2019
The Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance, an alliance of prominent health charities, professional and research bodies, welcomed the publication of the Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s consultation document from the UK Government.
The Green Paper recognises that for the last 30 years, problems with joints, bones and muscles have been the most common cause of years lived with disability in England and the Green Paper’s proposition includes increasing the join-up across mental and physical health services. It includes ensuring businesses are equipped with the knowledge and tools they need for musculoskeletal health, convening a reference group on this.…
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Guest blog by Andy Bell, Deputy Chief Executive, Centre for Mental Health
Having a musculoskeletal condition increases your risk of having a mental health problem, and people with a mental health condition are more likely to have a range of MSK problems. Yet the way services for both are organised and the ways professionals in each are trained offers little recognition of the overlaps between them.
Mental health and MSK conditions share some common traits and challenges. Both are complex and diverse.…
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NICE are inviting organisations to register as a stakeholder for the guideline: ‘Safe prescribing and withdrawal management of prescribed drugs associated with dependence and withdrawal’.
Registered stakeholders will have the opportunity to comment on the draft scope and guideline during consultation and all comments received from registered stakeholders will be considered and responded to individually. You will also be privy to an embargoed release of the guideline prior to publication in the public domain.
To register as a stakeholder, please complete the online form from the NICE website, and you can find more information about NICE’s guideline work here.
Last year, ARMA members helped Glykeria Skamagki, the senior lecturer in Physiotherapy at Coventry University, with the first stage of a study into chronic musculoskeletal conditions and their management at the workplace. The results were very interesting and now to follow-up the researchers are conducting a survey to identify the strategies that older employees use to manage chronic musculoskeletal conditions at the workplace.
The aim is to understand the problems highlighted at the interview stage, explore the opinion of the larger population, and ultimately to help people work better.…
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IMplementation of Physical Activity into routine Clinical pracTice in Rheumatic Musculoskeletal DiseaseThe IMPACT-RMD study aims to raise awareness on the importance of physical activity in people with Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Diseases (RMDs). The goal is to help and support managing healthcare practitioners to understand more about physical activity as well as incorporate/include physical activity advice in clinical consultations.
Physical activity has multiple different benefits for RMDs, including better quality of life, better fitness and sleep, less fatigue and pain while it can also reduce inflammation.…
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Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is very much on my mind as I write this during RA Awareness Week. Yesterday I attended a roundtable discussing the NHS Long Term Plan (LTP) and RA. Rheumatology doesn’t get a specific mention in the plan, but there is plenty of content on related issues. There is mention of chronic pain, for instance, which is very relevant to ARMA and to RA. Access to integrated pain services is something ARMA members have identified as a priority following the publication of our mental health report last month, and by the time this is published I will have presented at a meeting of the Chronic Pain Policy Coalition.…
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The UK Gout Society is seeking a new patient trustee.
Those interested should apply to info@ukgoutsociety.org.
Corresponding to ARMA’s Construction Roundtable and the report we published at the end of May, the British Dieticians’ Association would like to direct those interested to their BDA Work Ready programme, which is aimed at all employers, including the construction industry: www.bdaworkready.co.uk.
