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. For example understanding why certain medications have side effects or developing tools such as website to help young people manage their condition.

The aim of this group is to make sure that the research that happens about conditions such as JIA, Lupus, Fibromyalgia,or Scleroderma means something to the young people it affects, reflecting what’s important to them and not just what is important to the researchers. You can find the latest Your Rheum newsletter here.

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 two main ways you can be involved:

By attending face-to-face meetings
By being a virtual member and completing online activities

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 details
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 may be 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.

Our work

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

Worked with over 20 different research projects across the UK including industry sponsored studies
Some members were part of a national rheumatology conference panel (BSPAR conference 2016). Read Kelsey’s blog here
Members contributed to and edited a chapter in “Adolescent and Young Adult Rheumatology In Clinical Practice” 1st ed. 2019 Edition, by Janet E. McDonagh, Rachel S. Tattersall
Attended CLUSTER consortium launch event and participated in panel discussions
Co-authored academic international rheumatology conference abstract (EULAR congress 2019)

Get in touch

Email: your.rheum@manchester.ac.uk

Phone the group coordinators:

Laura Lunt 0161 275 1901
Katharine Cresswell 0161 276 8943

Website: www.yourrheum.org

Twitter: @YourRheum

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