To mark International Women’s Day, we are pleased to share an update on our Listening to Leicester Women study.
This is a project exploring how working age women (from 16 – 66 years) living in Leicester experience health research, what helps them get involved, and what makes it more difficult.
Why this study matters
Health research is important for developing the treatments, care and services that we all receive. But many women, especially those from diverse groups, or who live in poorer areas are often under-represented in health research. This can be due to various reasons such as childcare or family caring responsibilities, work and time pressure and cultural or language barriers.
As part of this one-year study, we are interviewing around 20 women of working age living in Leicester.
We’re listening to their thoughts and feelings about health research, to understand why they might want to take part in research, or what might put them off.
What we learn will help us create an ‘inclusion training package’ for health research professionals. This training will support researchers to better understand the real-life challenges the women of Leicester face and help them to design research studies that are more welcoming, accessible and relevant to women from different backgrounds.
To help make the training as effective and engaging as possible, we will also be talking to a range of health research professionals about how the training should be designed and delivered. Their feedback will help ensure the training is practical, easy to access and used in ways that help them to include all women into health research.
Study progress to date (March 2026)
Interviews are well underway, and so far we have spoken with:
- 17 women living in Leicester
- 15 health research professionals
Early analysis is already revealing some important insights from the women who took part, and the researchers we interviewed are offering practical, thoughtful ideas about the kind of training that would help them design and deliver more inclusive studies.
On International Women’s Day, we would like to send a huge thank you to all of the women living in Leicester and health research professionals that taken part in this study.
For more information, please contact Emma Beeston, PhD Researcher, University of Leicester
Email: epb5@leicester.ac.uk