Supporting the British Heart Foundation to gather insights from cardiovascular patients in an inclusive and supportive way
Project aims:
The British Heart Foundation wanted to speak to people with experience of cardiovascular disease to understand more about the challenges and opportunities for improving care. This project specifically focused more on speaking with people who have previously been underrepresented.
We worked closely with the British Heart Foundation to map out their future insight aims, current insight sources, recruitment networks and created an inclusive insight gathering and recruitment plan.
We worked collaboratively to co-design a more inclusive approach to gathering and using patient insights to drive decision making. Inclusively brought in and partnered with Common Collective on this project.
Project background
The British Heart Foundation provides services to support people with heart and circulatory diseases. They fund medical research into cures and treatments for cardiovascular disease, work to influence Government policy and provide information and support services to those affected by these conditions.
BHF was coming to the end of their 5-year strategy and they wanted to make sure their new strategy was rooted in the experiences and needs of people with heart conditions, particularly those who have previously been underrepresented in research.
BHF also wanted to improve their approach to working with community groups and networks to enable them to create and sustain long-standing relationships that would support an inclusive approach to research in the future.
Co-deigning the research with people with lived experience:
We co-designed a workshop guide, discussion guide and quantitative survey with people with lived experience of heart and circulatory conditions. We also conducted workshops with people across BHF to further refine the research aims, survey and qual research approach.
Following this, we conducted 25 one to one interviews and 5 workshops, reaching a total of 52 people with cardiovascular disease and risk factors across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Inclusive research and recruitment:
We ensure that people could take part in the research in a way that they felt most comfortable, wether that was over the phone, video call or in person at a workshop.
We spoke to people with a broad range of backgrounds with a particular focus on underrepresented groups like people with South Asian, African or Caribbean heritage, and those experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage, younger people and people with disabilities. We asked people to talk us through their heart health journeys, we were led my them about and provided signposting to support during and after the sessions.
We also spoke to 6 community groups and 3 national charities to understand how the British Heart Foundation could further develop relationships with them to inform research and strategy in the future.
The outcomes and impact:
We developed a research report, summarising the key challenges and barriers experienced by the people we spoke to. We mapped the key needs and concerns across the journey from pre-diagnosis, to treatment and ongoing management. We highlighted the areas where people felt they needed more support and created actionable insight for the BHF team to inform their future strategy.
Feedback from people who took part in the research:
People who participated in the research said that they greatly appreciated the opportunity to reflect on their experiences and consider their hopes for the future.
“Working with Charley, Kat and the Inclusively team has been fantastic, they've been incredibly flexible and always gone the extra mile to meet our needs. Their expert involvement has helped us connect with communities we couldn't reach before, that made a key impact on our strategic thinking”
— Rony Arafin, Director of Health Insights, British Heart Foundation
Thank you to all those we spoke to as part of this research - we learned so much from you and greatly appreciate you sharing your lives with us. Thank you to the community groups we spoke to for their time and honesty.
Thank you to the British Heart Foundation for being so brilliant to work with!
Client: British Heart Foundation
Services: Service Design, User Research, Design Research
Team: Charley Pothecary, Kat Jennings, Caroline Rogers, Florance Nolan