Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

The Health Innovation Network is actively working to ensure it plays a pivotal role in championing and delivering equality and diversity in its leadership, its workforce and in the way it carries out its work.

The Network has committed to this agenda through a series of Diversity Pledges, and every Health Innovation Network is developing an action plan setting out how we will achieve these goals.

The pledges are:

  • We will set annual equality and diversity objectives, report on these to our Boards and publish achievements and challenges in our annual reports.
  • We will have a designated person within each organisation with whom concerns about equality and diversity can be raised.
  • The Health Innovation Network will annually review and publish its collective performance including performance for any national programmes, for example ensuring diverse representation in decision making processes for the NHS Innovation Accelerator.

  • We will carry out Equality Analysis on all national and key local projects and programmes.
  • We will actively engage with, and involve, diverse communities in our work, ensuring we include people from marginalised and seldom-heard groups.
  • Our publications and communications will promote diversity, highlight diverse role models, challenge stereotypes and champion the positive impact of diversity on innovation.

  • We will undertake positive action to ensure our workforce reflects the diversity of the communities we serve, including steps to ensure diversity at all levels.
  • We will encourage our staff to positively challenge and promote positive action when they see a lack of diversity.
  • All Health Innovation Network staff will have undertaken unconscious bias training by the end of 2020.

Our local Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) working group, formed of self-elected HIWM staff working across the organisation in a range of roles and capacities, help to steer our work to become a more inclusive and diverse organisation. Recent actions include:

  • Hosting a virtual Privilege Walk – an interactive session delivered to the whole team, designed to open further discussions on equality, diversity and inclusion amongst staff.
  • Designing supportive literature – providing an overview of the HIWM D&I aims, education on protected characteristics, and how the team can be more mindful of D&I.
  • Creating a video for the team – clearly articulating how the HIWM have built on the Health Innovation Network national pledges and developed local responses.
  • Developing #voiceyourcommitment social media campaign – offering team members the opportunity to personally contribute to addressing inequalities and inequity in health.

We are actively engaged with the Health Innovation Network Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) group to share best practice and create a common framework nationwide.

For more information on our regional approach to equality, diversity and inclusion please contact diversity@healthinnovationwm.org

Resources

Download the Health Innovation Network Diversity and Innovation report here.