Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance
Influencing policy and care together for best lifelong musculoskeletal health
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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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
A few days ago the Chief Medical officer, Chris Whitty, published his report for 2023 entitled health in an ageing society. I’m sure many of you will immediately seek out the MSK related content, skimming straight to the section on early diagnosis of osteoporosis or the case studies on ESCAPE-pain and MSK hubs. However, those are not the bits I think are most important for us.
The big take away message for me is the section on multi-morbidity.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
ARMA is in the process of writing up the report of our inquiry into the impact of deprivation on MSK health inequalities. Of course, this is not the only factor that impacts on MSK health inequalities. Age, sex, ethnicity and a range of other factors intersect to give the highly unequal picture we see. So I was delighted to be invited to speak at a Kings Fund conference on women’s health.
MSK proved to be an excellent introduction to the day with many parallels with the rest of the agenda.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
I have just finished facilitating one of our regional meetings bringing together stakeholders to talk about what’s happening at the local level with MSK services. It’s clear there is a lot of willingness to do something, despite a lot of confusion around who leads on MSK at an ICS level. A lot of questions were asked at the meeting. Where are the MSK targets being reported? Are the ICBs aware of what’s happening? We’ve got a case to introduce a Fracture Liaison Service, but how do we get anyone to listen?…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
Everyone working in or living with MSK conditions will have been delighted to read the interim report of the Major Conditions Strategy. MSK is recognised as a “major condition”. It has its own section alongside cancer, dementia, mental health and others. The same size, the same structure, the same status. It finally puts MSK where it belongs. Or should do.
There is so much to welcome in the document. The focus on prevention and personalisation. On treatments in the community and alignment of physical and mental health.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
I’ve been talking a lot about self-management recently. We’ve had conflicting views through our MSK health inequalities inquiry – does it help address inequalities or exacerbate them?
It seems that it partly depends on what you mean by self-management. One of our lived experience partners said, “self-management is code for you’re on your own.” There is some suspicion amongst both people living with MSK conditions and health care professionals that this is the case, which can lead to resistance to uptake in the NHS.…
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