16 October 2024. We are thrilled to announce that two WBI researchers have been selected in a national programme to focus on health inequalities experienced by marginalised communities. WBI is one of the 11 voluntary sector organisations chosen after a competitive application process.
Funded by NHS England’s School of Public Health and delivered by the Scottish Community Development Centre and the University of Reading, the one-year programme of Community Participatory Action Research supports voluntary sector organisations working with communities negatively affected by health inequalities by equipping them to undertake research in their own communities.
Along with the Scottish Community Development Centre and the University of Reading’s training and mentoring of community researchers, the Institute of Voluntary Action Research will deliver workshops on stakeholder engagement. In 2025, the group of 27 community researchers will present key findings of their research projects to system leaders with the aim to inform local or regional policy decisions.
WBI is thrilled to announce that we will host two community researchers, Ms Fatma Tuylu and Ms Anita David, through the months ahead for training on research methodology and in the design and delivery of a community project that seeks to:
- identify the challenges that prevent minority women from speaking on their experiences of menopause; and
- propose recommendations that can improve the healthcare to ethnic women undergoing the psychological and hormonal changes associated with menopause.
Fatma Tuylu is a skilled SDET/QA Engineer. She received her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science Engineering from the Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul, Turkey, and has received certification in agile development, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) and software testing. She and her family now call Portsmouth, England their home. She also volunteered with WBI and helped out with our Food With Friends events.
Fatma is a very keen learner and has a passion for sharing knowledge and learning new technologies. We are also learning what all her computing certifications mean in normal language! She is enthusiastic about every challenge and helping migrant communities to better settle and integrate locally.
It is an honour for me to work with Bonny and Anita and to be involved in a really important project for public awareness. I am sure that I will learn a lot from this project.
— Fatma Tuylu
Anita David is our Director of Community Engagement for WBI. You can read more about her bio, here. She is currently doing community development work at Stop Domestic Abuse, a Portsmouth-based charity that supports and protects victims and survivors of domestic abuse and stalking.
We are very excited to build the local capacity for community participatory action research, along with other local awardees, including Portsmouth’s Spark Community Space, Portsmouth Mediation Service, and the Hampshire County Council. To read more about the research findings of previous research groups, visit here.
We are excited that the new research of our cohort on the health inequalities experienced by marginalised communities will feature next year!
