“Betwixt and Between”
- Do you live with pain and find that you are mostly managing the pain yourself rather than having treatment in healthcare services?
- Have you ever felt like your pain has meant you are not able to live the life you want but that you have struggled to find support and have had to manage it yourself?
- Are you interested in hearing from others in a similar situation to share experiences?
- Would you like to participate in research to help learn more about this so that it can help others in similar situations?
If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions then this Footsteps Festival event, in conjunction with Brunel University, on Thursday 8th December at 7pm GMT may be for you! (Please note this event is on Thursday 8th Dec not 9th)
Please click on the video picture below if you would prefer to watch a video of this information
About this event
Chronic pain, sometimes called persistent pain, is pain that lasts for longer than three months. One in three people live with some form of chronic pain which comes with huge negative personal, societal, and economic costs. Most people living with pain, and more from marginalised and minoritised groups, are currently doing so without support from healthcare services.
Sometimes living with pain can feel like existing in an in-between place. The area between the high tide and low tide is an in-between, or liminal, space. This space between the tides is neither the sea nor is it truly the land, it’s “betwixt and between”.
Living with pain can feel a bit like this for some. A space between your life before your pain started and the life you want to be leading.
About the researcher
My name is Diarmuid Denneny and I’m one of the Footsteps team currently doing my PhD at Brunel University (Funded by an Economic and Social Research Council grant ). My research seeks to understand how people who live with pain are managing in the space between first having pain and living the lives they want with pain. Surprisingly little is known about this and there isn’t much published in the research about it.
What is the purpose of the event?
This event aims to understand more about how people manage when they are not receiving healthcare. The feedback and discussions from this event will help to inform future stages of this research and the intention of this approach is to improve health and reduce health inequities for people living with pain by involving people who live with pain, like you!
Participatory approaches in Research
Diarmuid intends to carry out this research with people who live with pain, including members of the footsteps team, and anyone interested who attends footsteps events, using what is called Participatory Action Research (PAR). This differs from most other research approaches to health research because it is undertaken with, and for, people rather than on them.
PAR research usually involves several cycles, or phases, of research and includes actions decided upon by the participants themselves.
Ethical approval
Ethical approval has been granted for this research by Brunel University’s College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences Research Ethics Committee, on 20/09/2022. This event will be the first phase of this research.
If you would like to learn more or to book a place
please follow this link to read an information sheet and complete a short consent survey
We hope to see you at the event!
Thanks again
Diarmuid and the Footsteps Team
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