The new post graduate certificate course in health communication, engagement and consultation has been awarded a significant grant by the Health Foundation charity to be used as a bursary fund to reduce the course cost for NHS employees.

The course fees include University registration, all teaching facilities, hotel facilities for residential teaching modules, insurance, IP licences, course administration, course teaching, marking and external examination.  And the grant from the Health Foundation enables us to reduce these course fees from £12k + VAT to an average of £6k + VAT.

However, the Health Foundation, NHS Providers, NHS Confederation, NHS England and Buckinghamshire New University are keen to encourage course participants from diverse backgrounds so we will be offering a larger bursary to these candidates.

What do we mean by diversity?

For many organisations, equality has traditionally meant treating everybody in the same way but this perception of “fairness” suggests that everyone is at the same starting point and that everyone needs the same level of support and encouragement.  The evidence is now clear that people who have experienced disadvantage at some point in their lives are not starting from the same place as others.

We believe we should be thinking about fairness in terms of equity, rather than equality.  Equity aims to give everyone what they need to be successful and focuses more on ‘equality of outcomes’.

How will we define diversity for the purposes of the post graduate certificate course?

Diversity certainly involves the range of differences that include – but are not limited to – the characteristics that are protected by the Equality Act 2010.  These are: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, and sex.

But arguably diversity goes wider than this and may also include ethnicity, sexual orientation, social class and socio economic position in society.  It means having a range of people in the workforce with various lifestyles, experiences, and perspectives, that help to ensure the expression of a broad range of ideas and the fostering of creativity and innovation.

Specifically we believe the combination of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) should be considered together where belonging – an individual’s sense of acceptance – can be high or low depending on the other three factors.

This year’s NHS Communicate report “The state of NHS communications” says…

The NHS communications profession, like the wider communications profession, has long held the ambition to improve the ethnic diversity of its workforce, including among its most senior leaders. This survey appears to indicate that we are going backwards on this front, with less than 5% of the most senior NHS communications professionals from an ethnic minority background. In addition, almost two thirds (61%) of senior NHS communicators say they do not have a communications workforce that is representative of the local communities they serve.

With this in mind, we are committed to recruiting at least 30% of course participants from various diverse backgrounds.

What does this mean in terms of bursaries?

The first cohort of the new postgraduate health communications course will comprise 16 course participants and every one of these who is a NHS employee will get a bursary to help reduce the cost to their employer.

The bursary fund from the Health Foundation means we can offer EVERY candidate a minimum bursary of £4,000 while candidates from diverse backgrounds will receive a larger bursary of £6,000.