"We’re not animals in a zoo to look at – people need to meet us on a level" - How Can Medical Schools Better Support VCSOs and their Service Users to Co-design and Deliver Inclusion Health Teaching to Medical Students?

Inclusion Health (IH), as defined by NHS England, is ‘an umbrella term used to describe people who are socially excluded, who typically experience multiple interacting risk factors for poor health, such as stigma, discrimination, poverty, violence, and complex trauma’ (NHS, 2025). Despite the growing recognition of health inequalities, Inclusion Health remains greatly underrepresented in medical school curricula in the UK. These curricula may often lack consideration of the lived experience within marginalised groups. This project expands on findings from a wider scope of work exploring the adequacy of Inclusion Health (IH) Teaching in UK undergraduate medical curricula (Ahluwalia et al., 2024 - NIHR Endorsed Project PEDHSC29). The study highlighted a lack of involvement of communities with lived experience in curriculum design and limited teaching and knowledge on Inclusion Health. This follow on consultation aims to explore how local Voluntary, Community, and Social Organisations (VCSOs) can be involved in the creation of Inclusion Health education within medical schools and through this, allow us to identify practical methods to effectively collaborate and create a sustainable curriculum.<p></p>