CEO Update | ARMA

A stronger voice for MSK

CEO update by Sue Brown

March has been a very impactful month for ARMA. My highlight was probably the ARMA roundtable on mental health. The statistics about incidence of mental health amongst people with musculoskeletal conditions don’t surprise me. It’s obvious why long-term pain and difficulty moving would go along with high levels of depression and anxiety. What surprises me is how little support people get with their mental well-being and that’s something ARMA is determined to change.

ARMA members will be discussing what they want to do next on mental health at this week’s members meeting.…

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CEO update – Prevention: putting MSK centre stage

Prevention seems to have been the theme of my February. The possibility that a lot of the pain and disability of MSK conditions might be prevented, and that this is being taken seriously is an exciting prospect. Even where the conditions can’t be prevented, good self-management support can make a big difference to the impact of the condition. The Government is clear that the future sustainability of the NHS depends on prevention, and that it wants to improve healthy life expectancy by at least five extra years, by 2035.…

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CEO update: Let’s all get on the bandwagon together

As I sat down to write this, NHS Chief Executive Simon Stevens was on the radio talking about plans to increase the ability of patients to see pharmacists and physios rather than a GP as their first point of contact in the NHS. Ensuring we have the right workforce to meet the growing health needs of an ageing population is a real challenge. ARMA’s different professional members have a lot to contribute, as I discovered when I spent a day at the Royal College of Chiropractors conference.…

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CEO update: The NHS Long-Term Plan – it’s what happens next that matters

by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA

The NHS Long-Term plan was published earlier this week. I was pleased to see quite a bit about musculoskeletal health throughout the document. There has been lots of immediate reaction, positive and negative. I think now is the time to focus on the positive, so here are my highlights.

The first reference to musculoskeletal health comes early on, (para 1.17) but seems to be mostly about frailty and older people. Great, I thought as I read this, but MSK isn’t just about older people.…

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CEO update – New Year’s resolutions

Happy New Year to all our readers.

As I write this, everyone is talking new year’s resolutions and I’m thinking about resolutions for ARMA and the MSK community.

ARMA is seeing the new year in with the start of a new strategy. We’re resolving to use this to make our work more focused and more effective, with an emphasis on collaboration and engagement. We hope that you will resolve to collaborate and engage with us. Our strength is in our membership, supporters and stakeholders – it’s by working together that we can bring about change.…

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CEO update – Exciting and uniting us

November has been a very active month for ARMA. Not just in the sense that we are doing a lot but also that a lot of it has been about physical activity, which seems to be exciting and uniting the MSK community.

The ARMA lecture featured three speakers with different perspectives on the subject. A wide range of people attended, bringing GPs into conversations with public health professionals, parkrun with sport therapists, pain specialists with the DWP, Sport England with Healthwatch.…

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Mental health and MSK rising up the agenda

There seems to have been a lot of mental health in my work in recent weeks. I’m pleased for two reasons. Personally, as someone who used to work for Mind it’s a subject that remains dear to my heart. But also, because this increase in mental health related activity is a sign that the mental health sector is focusing increasingly on the needs of people with long-term conditions. At the moment that’s focusing much more on conditions like diabetes or cardiovascular disease.…

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MSK – Not a challenge anyone can solve alone

I have just returned from the British Orthopaedic Association centenary congress, where ARMA had a session on integrated pathways for orthopaedics. One thing that struck me about the event was the recognition of the importance of multi-disciplinary working. There were significant numbers of delegates who were not orthopaedic surgeons, particularly physiotherapists. A session I attended on hip fracture covered the crucial role of physios in rehabilitation.

It is easy to understand how any professional can become focused on their part of the pathway, delivering the surgery or the rehab to a high standard.…

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Rising up the agenda

Musculoskeletal conditions are common – we all know that. But it hadn’t struck me until recently just how common compared to other long term conditions. 17 million people in the UK have an MSK condition. Compare that with the 850,000 with dementia and think about how much we talk about dementia. It’s a similar picture for other conditions: diabetes, 3.5 million people, cardiovascular, 7 million. Only mental health exceeds the prevalence of MSK conditions.

Of course, we are rightly worried about dementia.…

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No health without MSK health

“No health without MSK health”. Those were the words of our guest speaker at the ARMA AGM and they clearly struck a chord with members. They were on my mind last week when I attended a consultation meeting held by NHS England about the new ten-year plan for the NHS. At the moment MSK health doesn’t get as much profile as conditions such as mental health, cancer or cardiovascular. Not to downplay the importance of these conditions, but MSK health underpins all aspects of our ability to be independent and lead the active lives we want.…

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