Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance
Influencing policy and care together for best lifelong musculoskeletal health
Arthritis Action launches new data on impact of osteoarthritis on younger adults.
To support World Arthritis Day, Arthritis Action commissioned YouGov to re-examine data from its 2022 Impact on Daily Life report on the lifestyle impacts for those living with osteoarthritis at a younger age. The resulting new report “The Impact of Osteoarthritis” covers themes such as work, relationships, intimacy, and fertility as well as social life.
Read more on the arthritisaction.org.uk website.
This week ARMA published the Act Now report of the Inquiry 
on Musculoskeletal Health Inequalities and Deprivation.
The report highlights the impact of social and economic determinants of health on those living with MSK conditions. People with MSK conditions in more deprived areas develop conditions earlier, have more complex cases, yet face far greater challenges in managing their MSK conditions and accessing quality MSK services.
Act Now aims to address the drivers of poor musculoskeletal health acting on people living in deprivation and crucially it brings a focus to the part health services across the UK can play to address inequalities.…
Read more of this article
The State of Musculoskeletal Health is a collection of the most up-to-date, UK-wide statistics on arthritis and other musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions. This includes how many people have these conditions, the number at risk of developing these conditions, 
the impact of these on a person, on the health system and society, and inequalities that can be found within all the topics above. It is a resource for healthcare professionals, policy makers, public heath leads, researchers, people with these conditions, and anyone interested in MSK health.…
Read more of this article
Arthritis Action launches report on working aged people with arthritis
Arthritis Action has launched new research with YouGov to explore the experiences of people of working age in Great Britain who live with osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis. YouGov carried out an online survey of 2,120 people aged 25 to 65 living with the conditions, comparing the results to a similar survey conducted by YouGov (for Arthritis Action), in 2018 to see how their situations have changed since the pandemic.
The results gave a good picture of people’s concerns, the impact of arthritis on their daily lives, and how they felt they could be helped further by employers and support services.…
Read more of this article
The
BestMSK Health programme has collaboratively codeveloped, with stakeholders and lived experience partners, draft high-level metrics to support the measurement of primary and community MSK service delivery.
MSK professionals, analysts, leads/managers, commissioners or anyone working in the improvement of MSK services are encouraged to provide their feedback on these recommendations through a quick online survey, which is now open.
Feedback is welcomed from MSK professionals, analysts, MSK leads and managers, commissioners, MSK lived experience partners and anyone who is involved in system-wide transformation and improvement of MSK services.…
Read more of this article
Versus Arthritis is hosting the 11th National MSK Health Data Group on Monday 2nd December 2019 from 9:00-13:00, followed by lunch and networking until 14:00 at The Royal Society, London, SW1Y 5AG.
The speaker programme will run in line with the event’s main ethos of creating a common forum to empower all those working on and with an interest in MSK-related data to come together and both share and hear about the data-related activities going on across the MSK community.
The programme for the day with be focused around key talking points in the MSK data community covering topics such as MSK conditions in children and young people, improving the quality of care in MSK pain medicine, and general project updates from ongoing projects such as the National Early Inflammatory Arthritis audit and the possible development of an MSK Intelligence Network.…
Read more of this article
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.…
Read more of this article
