EDI-RU: Equality, Diversity & Inclusion
The EDI research unit wants to address stark and persistent mental health inequalities for minoritised groups and people with protected characteristics so that they can receive the care that they want and need. Through meaningful co-production and high-quality research, they aim to improve the quality and accessibility of mental health care for often under-represented and under-served communities.
About EDI-RU
The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Research Unit (EDI-RU) is a collaboration between the University of Manchester and Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH).
We want to address stark and persistent mental health inequalities for minoritised groups and people with protected characteristics so that they can receive the care that they want and need. Through meaningful co-production and high-quality research, we aim to improve the quality and accessibility of mental health care for often under-represented and under-served communities.
What does EDI mean?
Equality: Systemic and historical barriers to equity need to be addressed to achieve equality. Equity means ‘fairness’. For example, people of all social identities having fair access to resources and decision-making which does not discriminate based on identity.
Inclusion: Deliberately creating environments where all people have access to the same opportunities and can achieve their full potential through eliminating discrimination and inequalities.
Diversity: Respecting and valuing all forms of difference/social identities including the 'Protected Characteristics’ outlined in the Equality Act of (2010).
Why is EDI important?
There are many inequalities for minoritised people in both physical and mental health. By addressing EDI in mental health research, we aim to reduce inequality within mental healthcare.
Examples of existing mental health inequalities are:
- who receives a psychiatric diagnosis and who is exposed to the inequalities that lead to mental health difficulties in the first place;
- who can access appropriate mental health services such as talking therapies or the pathways to that care (for example through one’s GP versus the Criminal Justice System);
- who receives care that addresses people’s needs;
- who delivers that care; and
- who does the research that informs or evaluates that care.
You can see some statistics here: Mental health inequalities: factsheet | Centre for Mental Health
A crucial step toward eliminating these inequalities and central to the social justice ethos of the EDI Research Unit is meaningful co-production of knowledge with minoritised and marginalised groups; voices of those ‘seldom heard/people seldom seen’. We aim to build EDI and research capability in early career researchers, service users and their families, mental health staff and survivors, and community representatives. Involving people currently under-represented in research and under-served by services will help to embed EDI in practice and processes, building a lasting legacy and from the outset.
What we do
Our vision at EDI-RU is to:
- promote and carry out high-quality, inclusive, and innovative research to improve mental health services so that minoritised groups and people with protected characteristics (e.g. race/ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation) receive the care that they want and need;
- contribute to EDI education and training of mental health staff equipping them with the awareness, knowledge, skills, and confidence to provide responsive care for all regardless of social identity or status;
- facilitate and develop diversity and inclusion for Patient & Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) and co-production in research.
The Unit takes an intersectional, life-course approach to researching inequalities in mental and physical health that captures the complexity connected to people’s wellbeing. This means that we understand inequalities to be shaped by the many social divisions (e.g., race, gender, class, sexual orientation, disability) and multiple experiences of disadvantage that work together and influence each other over the course of a person’s life (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016).
Unit Director: Professor Dawn Edge
Professor of Mental Health & Inclusivity, University of Manchester
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