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NIHR Birmingham BRC-CRF Joint Equity, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2022-2027

1. Glossary of key terms
2. Abbreviations
3. Introduction
The NIHR/Wellcome Trust Birmingham Clinical Research Facility (CRF) and NIHR Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) serve a diverse population of 5.7 million people and employ an expanding workforce. We work together on patient-orientated research to translate scientific discoveries into new treatments.

We connect patients and communities with healthcare professionals and scientists to develop treatments that benefit patients and invigorate the local economy, often through partnerships with industry or patient charity groups.

Our teams are part of the below organisations. There are several other partner organisations, detailed in Appendix 1.
- University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB)
- Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (BWCH)
- University of Birmingham (UoB)
The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) commits to embedding Equity, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EEDI) across its research infrastructure, systems and culture. The Birmingham BRC and CRF will work together to contribute to the NIHR EEDI objectives.
4. Definitions
5. Statement of Commitment
We commit to creating an environment that fosters dignity and mutual respect. An environment where everyone can achieve their full potential without hindrance or discrimination. The Equality Act 2010 underpins this commitment. The act outlines nine protected characteristics, which are:
- age
- disability
- sex
- sexual orientation
- gender reassignment
- race
- religion or belief
- marriage or civil partnership
- pregnancy or maternity
The strategy also recognises specific barriers and inequalities some individuals face. These include:
- socioeconomic status
- geographic location
- ability to access health care services
- support of flexible working
Our approach aligns with BRC and CRF’s current policies and the recent updates from UHB, UoB, and our other partners but also allows our research to remain flexible and curious, identifying and incorporating unrecognised characteristics while considering cultural and social changes.

This strategy document outlines our principles and goals for promoting EEDI within BRC and CRF and our unwavering commitment to achieving them. We strive to provide equal research opportunities for all, regardless of their background or circumstances. This approach accurately represents the broader population and reflects our dedication to fairness and equality.

As part of our EEDI strategy, we are implementing initiatives to enhance diversity among study participants. This will enable us to better understand and empathise with underserved communities. Our efforts will also help to improve research accessibility for underrepresented groups and foster a more diverse and inclusive research workforce.

The strategy aims to foster inclusivity, promote active engagement, and collaborate with community organisations catering to underrepresented and diverse groups. These partnerships will enable the delivery of community engagement and provide access to invaluable guidance. Furthermore, the strategy will allocate resources towards cultural intelligence development programmes for our research team, ensuring they can respond to diverse communities’ specific needs and values.

We recognise the need for collaboration with underserved communities. But relying on them alone is not the answer. We aim to make lasting changes by involving diverse stakeholders, including those often overlooked. We are committed to ethical and fair engagement with all communities without relying on stereotypes.

The strategy will continuously evolve during our programme journey. We recognise that to ensure the programme’s success, we must remain open to making necessary adjustments throughout its duration. By adopting a pragmatic and introspective approach, we can establish an inclusive framework that reflects progress and partnerships, promotes EEDI research and empowers us to realise our objectives and vision for a fairer and more inclusive society.
6. Our Vision
7. Our Approach
A successful delivery from the Birmingham BRC and CRF will include:
- Adopting a collective intelligence approach to experimental medicine. It combines our vision with our capacity and capability to design and deliver research. It will enable us to develop robust evidence that addresses the impact of complex and challenging issues. In this context, it may mean tackling systemic racism, promoting gender equality, or creating inclusive workplaces and communities.
- Enhancing workforce diversity and public participation. The aim is to reflect better the population we serve. This includes promoting diversity of thought and ensuring equity in our workforce and research, leading to better patient outcomes.
- Ensuring a constructive dissent approach, allowing us to hear all voices. We value different perspectives and challenging discussions. This approach will foster creativity and innovation and result in equity in decision-making.
- Providing an environment that instils a sense of safety. Enabling people to feel comfortable being themselves, sharing their opinions, and taking risks. It will stop the fear of criticism, judgement or punishment. It fosters open communication, collaboration, and trust. This can lead to higher levels of creativity, innovation, and productivity. It can also improve problem-solving and decision-making skills.
- Committing resources towards collecting and analysing pertinent data within the BRC and CRF to include diligent monitoring, comprehensive reporting, and thorough analysis of various aspects, such as our workforce, committee composition, and all individuals involved in our research programme.
Our ambition for the future is to create a diverse workforce that embraces different perspectives and worldviews. A place where there is a shared sense of purpose and belonging. A place where diversity and inclusion are integral in all aspects of the organisation, such as:
- behaviours
- structures
- systems
- processes
- research
- patients and public participants
8. Risks
9. Partners and Collaborators
10. Development of Strategy
A variety of sources were consulted to support the development of this strategy, including:
- the NIHR Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy
- the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust WRES Report 2022
- the recent NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard and Inclusion (WRESI)
- the Equality Delivery System 2022 for UHB
- the local Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policies
It was also developed with input from various stakeholders, including:
- the local Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Team
- CRF Team Leads
- BRC Core Strategic Group
- School of Public Health Research (SPHR)
The Centre for Patient-Reported Outcomes Research (CPROR) also thoroughly audited the NIHR BRC applications (past and present) to support the development of this strategy, including identifying any gaps, or areas of strength.

Our strategy will adapt to the needs of the local community, BRC, CRF, and our partners, as well as the evolving EEDI landscape. Collaborative, consultative processes will ensure everyone is on board and takes ownership.

11. Maturity – Measuring Progress

Our collaboration involves several organisations at different maturity levels regarding inclusion and diversity. We will implement the Deloitte Inclusive and Diversity Maturity Matrix to ensure seamless integration across our BRC and CRF infrastructures. This four-level model tracks the evolution of diversity and inclusion and will be a reliable tool for measuring our progress throughout the program.

With this model’s aid, we can assess our maturity level comprehensively, comparing it against specific actions and improvements aligned with our core metrics.

To ensure we are working towards integration of the maturity matrix, the NIHR BRC and CRF will adopt the following approach to monitor overall objective achievements:

Implementing robust governance and leadership, ownership and accountability for outcomes across the strategy for BRC and CRF.
Identifying and implementing a focused set of reporting protocols.
Establishing feedback mechanisms and providing continuous improvement opportunities.
Taking an evidence-based approach to data collection on EEDI metrics, including but not limited to gender, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, and age of employees and stakeholders, to understand improvement on disparities and take relevant action.
Defining benchmarks against industry standards or similar institutions to identify areas of improvement.

All staff in our NHS Trusts must undertake mandatory EDI training. This includes clinicians and researchers, who complete this as part of their induction. All academic staff must also complete training programmes to support cultural intelligence development. We will ensure that the programme workforce undertakes a minimum requirement of EEDI training, such as implicit bias, inclusion awareness and cultural intelligence.

The training relates to the nine protected characteristics and other social inequalities. These include socioeconomics, healthcare access and geography. It focuses on the impact on staff and research participants from protected characteristic groups. Our programme partners are committed to EEDI development and training all researchers and staff across the BRC and CRF.

We are actively implementing and improving our services as a newly expanded programme. We are currently positioned at the beginning of the programmatic stage and aim to become leader-led in the EEDI Maturity Model within the next three years.

Mandate		Movement
Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
Compliance	Programmatic	Leader-lead	Integrated
Compliance with equal opportunity/ affirmative action goals	Increasing the representation of specific demographic groups (e.g., women)	Levelling the playing field for all employees by addressing systemic cultural barriers	Leveraging difference to create business value
Legal/HR/D&I team	HR/D&I team	Business leaders	Whole organisation
• Largely homogeneous workforce. • Diversity seen as a problem to be managed. • Legacy clubs, cliques and other passive exclusive exist. • Actions are largely reactive; any additional focuses on recruitment of diverse talent	• Business cases articulated. • Diversity seen in terms of demographics, numbers and targets in place. • Ad-hoc and/or stand-alone initiatives such as mentoring, unconscious bias training, employee resource groups and events. • Resistance from majority is nascent. • Minority employees adapt and leave.	• More sophisticated understanding of EDI, and links to organisational strategy. • EDI a personal priority for CEO and executive team. • Systemic cultural barriers surfaced. • Strategy for cultural change created and growing resistance managed. • Leaders and managers are committed, role model inclusion, and are held accountable for actions outcome. • Talent schemes are reset. • Progress monitored relentlessly.	• Workforce is democratic and cognitively diverse. • Shared sense of purpose, (i.e. diversity of thinking) and meaning. • Integration into all aspects of the organisation, e.g. behaviour, structure and system. • Flexibility mainstreamed. • Focus on high performing, diverse thinking teams. • External brand matches internal one.

14. Strategic Objectives

Strategic aim 1. Workforce – Develop an inclusive culture and behaviour to sustain a diverse workforce that reflects the rich diversity of our community. We are committed to prioritising equality, equity, diversity and inclusion within our workforce. This will empower individuals from diverse backgrounds and enhance staff development and retention. We value and promote diversity of perspectives and treat everyone with respect.
Objectives
1.1	Adopt effective development programmes for the research leaders to support knowledge transfer, behavioural and cultural development in EEDI.
1.2	Ensure our people management processes and workforce policies adopt and apply robust, inclusive practices.
1.3	In collaboration with the academic capacity development team, we will ensure that research career development pathways are easily accessible/inclusive and provide clarity around access to these opportunities in a transparent manner.
1.4	Partner with the academic capacity development team to capture and share insights on demographics of individuals attending training/development and work to remove any identified barriers.

Strategic aim 2. Workforce – Equip our workforce to competently implement EEDI principles in research. To design and deliver impactful and relevant research we aim to foster relationships with external stakeholders including our diverse patient and public communities. To achieve this, we will develop and execute targeted outreach and engagement initiatives, offer ample development opportunities, and establish a support network that promotes shared learning and professional growth.
Objectives
2.1	Equip the research workforce with EEDI methodology and community engagement skills, enabling integration of EEDI-focused research methods and tools throughout the BRC and CRF.
2.2	Provide skill-enhancing placements and development opportunities to various stakeholder groups, but particularly those that are under-represented in science and medicine research.
2.3	Deliver inclusive community outreach events in underrepresented communities to raise the profile of research, encourage participation in clinical trials and inspire the next generation of researchers.

Strategic aim 3. Engagement – Patient, Public, Involvement and Engagement Guided by our local and national stakeholders, we will create an inclusive environment for PPIE where our work can be shaped by the diverse communities we serve.
Objectives
3.1	Encourage and support relationship building with communities to promote diversity and inclusivity among our public contributors through working across local and national PPIE-led structures.
3.2	Build on insights from NIHR Race Equality Framework pilots at Keele and Birmingham to integrate solutions to any barriers to EEDI practice that have been identified.
3.3	Work with a diverse group of patient contributors and communities to identify effective methods of communication to ensure that information about research is shared in an inclusive manner.

Strategic aim 4. Continuous Improvement – Monitoring & data Work with programme stakeholders to design and implement appropriate methods to collect data on our workforce, public contributors and research participants in order to effectively monitor our EEDI initiatives. Subsequently, we will analyse the data to enhance and refine our ongoing approach to EEDI.
Objectives
4.1	Perform a baseline evaluation of existing EEDI data collection and procedures. Review EEDI data to identify improvement areas and implement a relevant system to facilitate progress throughout the programme.
4.2	Share information and create dialogue with our local communities and stakeholders to improve understanding of our data collection and handling processes.
4.3	Co-develop a diversity data policy with the workforce and contributors informed by the NIHR data strategies and policies.
4.4	Grow knowledge and capability to ensure continuous improvement in our EEDI data practices to facilitate progress towards strategic outcomes and maturity matrix alignment.
4.5	Publish EEDI outcomes, celebrating good practices and successes, both qualitative and quantitative.

Appendix 1
Partner Organisations
- Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Trust
- Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust
- Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust
- Aston University
- Keele University
- University of Oxford
Community Partners
- Ada Lovelace Institute
- Age UK Birmingham
- Birmingham LGBT
- Black Lives Matter
- BRAP
- Data4BlackLives
- Women in AI
UHB and UoB Frameworks and Policies
- Dignity at Work Process – Prevention of Bullying Harassment – UHB
- Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Scheme – UoB
- Equality and Impact Assessment – UoB
- Fairness and Diversity – UoB
- Fair Employment Policy – Diverse, Equal and Inclusive – UHB
- Flexible Working Procedure – UHB
- Religious and Belief Guidelines – UoB
- Spiritual, Religious and Pastoral care – UHB
- Supporting individuals who are transgender and non-binary – UHB
Equality Standards and Compliance Frameworks
- Athena-SWAN Silver
- Carer Friendly Employer
- Disability Confident Employer
- Equality Diversity System 2023
- Gender Pay Gap
- Public Sector Equality Duty
- Race Equality Charter Bronze
- Stonewall Silver Employer
- Workforce Disability Standard
- Workforce Race Equality Standards
- Workforce Race Equality Standards and Inclusion
[1] https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/file/23111/blachir_report

NIHR Birmingham BRC-CRF Joint Equity, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2022-2027

1. Glossary of key terms

2. Abbreviations

3. Introduction

4. Definitions

5. Statement of Commitment

6. Our Vision

7. Our Approach

8. Risks

9. Partners and Collaborators

10. Development of Strategy

11. Maturity – Measuring Progress

12. Aligned Strategies

13. Governance and Lines of Reporting

Research Culture & EDI Group

Academic Career Development Group

14. Strategic Objectives

Appendix 1

Partner Organisations

Community Partners

UHB and UoB Frameworks and Policies

Equality Standards and Compliance Frameworks

In this section