About Your Rheum

Your Rheum was set up in October 2016 and is a group for people in the UK aged 11-24 years who have a diagnosed rheumatic condition. Your Rheum provides an easy way for young people to understand and get involved in rheumatology research that is relevant to them.  Check out the Your Rheum animation to understand what we do.

Our work

Here are some of the activities we have been involved in;

  • Worked on and shaped over 40 different research projects across the UK
  • Created and developed the Your Rheum animation
  • Presented at a number of national and international rheumatology conferences
  • Most recent publications with members of Your Rheum:

Esen, E., Gnanenthiran, S., Lunt, L. et al. The Your Rheum story: involvement of young people in rheumatology research. BMC Rheumatol 6, 43 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41927-022-00273-z: &

Shoop-Worrall SJW, Cresswell K, Bolger I, Dillon B, Hyrich KL, Geifman N; Members of the CLUSTER consortium. Nothing about us without us: involving patient collaborators for machine learning applications in rheumatology Ann Rheum Dis. 2021 Jul 5:annrheumdis-2021-220454 10.1136/annrheumdis-2021-220454

Are you interested in joining Your Rheum?

You must be:

  • Aged between 11-24 years old
  • Living in the UK (England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland)
  • Diagnosed with a rheumatic condition (e.g. JIA, lupus, fibromyalgia)
  • Under the care of a rheumatologist

There are three ways you can be involved:

  • By attending face-to-face group meetings
  • By attending virtual group meetings via Zoom
  • By completing individual online activities

Meetings in 2023

Summer break – we’ll be back soon

Contact us:

  • Becoming a Your Rheum group member is really straightforward and free. You can complete an application form here or get in touch with the Group coordinators for more information and an informal chat.
  • Group FAQs can be found here

How can researchers work with the Group?

The priority of the group is for work funded through BANNAR or for researchers who are members of BANNAR. However, there is capacity to work with researchers outside of BANNAR and so we encourage all researchers to get in touch with us to discuss their project further.

The Group can help you with all stages of your research project from generating research questions, inputting into grant application, through to evaluating the impact of your research. The work of the Group is classed as Public and Patient Involvement (PPI). Complete a researcher application form here.

Get in touch

Email: your.rheum@manchester.ac.uk

Website: www.yourrheum.org

Twitter: @YourRheum

Instagram: your_rhuem

Facebook members group page: Your Rheum

YouTube: Your Rheum channel 

 

Latest from Your Rheum

Your Rheum Mini Careers: Zahra’s Project

Why did you want to take part in a mini career project? I wanted to take part in a mini career project because I knew what I wanted to be doing, but I just didn’t have the knowledge on how to get there or what the first steps to take were. What career/professional did you […]

Your Rheum Mini Careers: Ecem’s project

  Why did you want to take part in a mini career project? To gain an insight into my dream job and to find out first-hand what it entails. What career/professional did you want to speak to? A paramedic. What key things did you want to ask a paramedic & why? What do you do […]

HOW I BECAME A PUBLISHED AUTHOR

Hey this is Ecem, one of the Your Rheum members. Laura and Janet (Your Rheum organisers), at a virtual Your Rheum meeting earlier in the year, talked about an opportunity to write a piece of work for a scientific journal called BioMed Central, or BMC for short. The paper was going to be about the […]