Community Connexions was set up in 2021 by Dr Christine Burt, director of research and innovation at Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (BCHC).

Throughout her career, Dr Burt had witnessed the disconnect between research and Birmingham's super-diverse communities, especially those that have traditionally been under-served by the NHS and other public institutions. She launched Community Connexions, which initially sought to understand barriers that led to poor engagement with research, but then quickly became something even bigger. 

As the Community Connexions team established wider community outreach, under the leadership of Dr Fatima Zakia supported by Dr Céline Benoit and Urfan Siddiqi, they held several public engagement activities, including listening events, focus groups, health checks and community roundtables, across many wards – especially the deprived ones – in the north, east and west of Birmingham. 

Having spoken to hundreds of residents, it became clear that if the team wanted to make health research more inclusive, they needed first to rebuild trust with people, understand the barriers and facilitators of healthcare access, cultural and linguistic diversity and wider determinants of health. 

This was done by letting communities lead the way and by working closely with the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector. They listened – not to respond, but to understand. And they heard people share their concerns, lived experience and ultimately why they did not want to engage with the statutory healthcare services, let alone research. 

As a result, Community Connexions has become a public engagement platform, which now seeks to maintain sustainable engagement with communities to ensure their priorities are informed by what people need and not what the system assumes they need. 

Listening and co-producing solutions with VCFSEs and a variety of people has enabled BCHC to adapt their services to better meet local needs, inform future health research and develop understanding for prevailing health inequalities across Birmingham. 

They also function collaboratively to share and learn through a steering committee that has diverse representation from the NHS and non-NHS organisations, other service providers, local authorities and the voluntary community faith sector.

Community Connexions did not forget its original mission – which was to ensure health research would become more representative of Birmingham's super-diversity. 

Having rebuilt relationships with some of the most under-served communities, the team has been able to bring research to community settings that would have traditionally refused to take part – often because of a lack of trust. 

Having now established themselves in Birmingham, researchers are reaching out to Community Connexions to help them recruit participants from diverse backgrounds, including vulnerable groups, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

An example of a successful project is the Early Surveillance for Autoimmune (ELSA) diabetes study, a type 1 diabetes screening study in children between the age of 3 and 13 years old. 

The patient information sheet was promoted by the Community Connexions team to the community groups engaging the appropriate cohort at each venue. Eight clinics were run in community settings recruiting over 160 children from the underserved communities. Each clinic was facilitated by research nurses and Community Connexions staff screening 15-30 children within a 90-120 minute session. This model has shown great success and will be adapted for future research projects.

Moving forward, Community Connexions seeks to expand its footprint to include central and south Birmingham, as well as Solihull, therefore covering the whole footprint of the Birmingham and Solihull ICB. 

Building capacity within the team to become a single front door for community engagement in BCHC aligns to the region's ethos of addressing health inequalities. Integrated care across Birmingham and Solihull has been divided into localities which will benefit from locally targeted community engagement from the Community Connexions team.

Community Connexions has been nominated at a range of events and are winners of the Health & Well Being 2024 category at the Community Inspiration Awards.

The team is listening to what communities want and strives to collaborate and co-create solutions together. The work is slow and steady, however, there is no doubt the passion coming from communities will drive change and improvement in the region.

For more information about Community Connexions, visit: www.bhamcommunity.nhs.uk/community-connexions/

To get in touch with the team, please email bchc.communityconnexions@nhs.net