On 25-26 March 2025, members of our ReCITE Consortium participated in the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) conference in Manchester. This year’s theme, “Equity in health protection: addressing inequalities, saving lives” set the tone for two inspiring days of discussion and knowledge sharing. The event brought together practitioners, researchers, industry leaders and policymakers from across the UK to explore how public health efforts can be more inclusive, responsive, and community driven.
Charlotte Hemingway and Amina Ismail took to the stage first at a parallel morning session on “Achieving impact through engaging with communities to deliver health security” chaired by Professor Kevin Fenton. The session showcased innovative approaches to community engagement to inform and strengthen health protection. View session details and slides.
“The UKHSA Conference was a great opportunity to showcase the brilliant creative health work going on in Liverpool City Region. It was also an important moment to advocate for a new funding model to tackle health inequity that can help unlock community innovation and creative thinking in healthcare. It was reassuring to speak with lots of other conference delegates on the importance of investing in trusted community voices and empowering them, not just to gather insights but to be able to use those insights to effect change in their community.” - Charlotte
“It was a real pleasure to speak at the UKHSA conference, sharing insights from the HELP and ReCITE projects, and the inspiring work of our Community Innovation Teams. Our session challenged the room to rethink health security, putting co-production and community-led approaches at the heart of it. These methods deliver real impact, even as we navigate challenges like funding and sustainability. They’re not a quick fix, but they’re key to building trust and driving better, more inclusive health outcomes that are co-designed with communities." - Amina
The conference was a powerful reminder of the momentum building across public health to tackle health inequalities with communities, not for them. The optimistic tone and call for collective action provided a welcome respite for public health stakeholders bracing against an unsettling geopolitical climate.
We would also like to congratulate Dawn Holford, ReCITE Co-Investigator, and the JITSUVAX team from University of Bristol for their poster presentation at the conference. The JITSUVAX training programme helps build community capacity for vaccine conversations to tackle misinformation and hesitancy and was a frequent conversation starter among delegates.
