Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance
Influencing policy and care together for best lifelong musculoskeletal health
by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
Last week I was in London with ARMA trustees discussing future plans and opportunities. An optimistic, upbeat meeting full of hope and pride in an organisation that is making a difference. One thing which will make a difference to those opportunities will be the outcome of the Government’s new ten year plan for the NHS.
With the inclusion of MSK in the Major Conditions Strategy we had begun to make progress. It is vital that we don’t lose that.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
It was a pleasure to join the CSP conference last week to speak about our Act Now report and what MSK physios can do to address health inequalities. As ever, lots of enthusiasm from people wanting to work on this. Our workshop was packed and 75% of people said they felt it was going to be difficult to do this but they were up for a challenge.
We asked what support would help people to make progress on inequalities.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
After two days in Belfast launching the ARMA MSK Health Inequalities report in Northern Ireland, I found myself on the plane back to England drafting the ARMA response to the Darzi report. I don’t think there are any new revelations in the report. Yet I do think it is important, and something everyone concerned about MSK health should take seriously. I recognise the truth in what it says.
Lord Darzi was asked to carry out an independent investigation into the NHS in England with a very short timescale.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
I was reminded the other day of the three horizons model and thought how well this expresses the tensions we face in MSK. There is wide recognition that how we do things now doesn’t work for a whole host of reasons. It was this realisation that led Sussex MSK Partnership to try to do something radically different. They came up with community assessment days, which have excited a lot of people. While they experiment with this, they have had to continue delivering the service as it is currently arranged.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
On the morning of 5 July 2024, ARMA members gathered on Zoom for initial reflections on the election result. The date had been set many months ago, and it wasn’t the ideal timing. Since then, we have had a little more time to see just what the new government would do. It is too early to say if this will be a turning point for the future of health and healthcare, but they have certainly not wasted any time.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
In the last few weeks we have had two new organisations join ARMA – welcome to Lupus UK and National Spine Network. As I write this, I have just received another inquiry about membership so that may soon be three new members.
This is a good time for ARMA’s membership to be growing. I’m writing in the run up to the general election. The airwaves are filled with parties bidding for your vote, making wild claims and undeliverable promises.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
We all know that people are waiting too long for a variety of MSK treatment in the NHS. We all know that the NHS is working hard to tackle waiting times with some success. However, the patient’s experience of waiting and the NHS understanding can be very different things. If the NHS is to deal with waiting lists well, then I would argue it needs to understand what waiting means to patients.
The GIRFT rheumatology Further Faster programme invited me to speak about this to their meeting last night.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
It is hard to overstate what a privilege it was to join so many of those who contributed to the Act Now report in Westminster last week. The report exemplifies the ARMA approach of doing things together which none of us could do alone. The energy in the room and the commitment to making a difference was amazing. I feel that MSK is demonstrating what NHS England’s Core20+5 approach looks like in practice.
Our recent FOI requests to ICBs have elicited some responses along the lines of MSK isn’t one of the Core20+5 conditions so we aren’t prioritising it.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
On Monday of this week, two years of hard work concluded with the publication of Act Now, the report of the ARMA inquiry into MSK health inequalities and deprivation. It’s been a long time since I suggested that we could get more out of the project if we held an inquiry, rather than just writing a report based on a literature review. Despite some challenges along the way, I am so glad that we did.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
At the end of each year, I look back and reflect on what ARMA has achieved in the past 12 months. It’s easy to lose sight of the positive – things go well, we move on and tackle another challenge. So it’s good to remind ourselves what’s happened in the previous year.
To be honest I had forgotten our lecture earlier in the year, on the theme of Community Powered MSK. Looking back, I remember the feedback we had describing it as amazing, insightful, thought provoking, refreshing, inspiring and innovative.…
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