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 new Your Rheum animation to understand what we do.

You can find the latest Your Rheum newsletter here.

Our work

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

Worked with over 40 different research projects across the UK including industry sponsored studies.
Created and developed the Your Rheum animation.
Presented at a number of national and international rheumatology conferences/meetings – most recently PReS Congress 2021, members Suruthi and Tilda presented our work on virtual involvement activities.
Members Beth and Imogen co-authored a publication in an academic rheumatology journal: 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.
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.

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 meetings
By attending virtual meetings via Zoom
By completing online activities

Next meetings

Dates coming 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 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.

Get in touch

Email: your.rheum@manchester.ac.uk

Phone the group coordinator:

Laura Lunt 0161 275 1901

Website: www.yourrheum.org

Twitter: @YourRheum

Instagram: your_rhuem

Facebook members group page: Your Rheum

Latest from Your Rheum

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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 […]

HIDDEN ILLNESS: ONE PATIENT’S STORY

Your Rheum member Sophie has written a great piece of work first published in May 2020 (Archives of Disease in Childhood, an international academic journal), about her experiences of living with a hidden illness. Sophie highlights some really important points that many young people with a health condition share, but she also reminds us that […]

My Experiences as a Medical Student @ University: Challenges & Solutions

Health and my JIA was a big concern with me when thinking about not just my course but all the other things that go with university. I’m not going to sugar coat it, there are many things that I do find challenging about being a medical student whether this is long commutes to placement that […]