School of Health & Wellbeing

The MAP Study team, based in General Practice and Primary Care, hosted the project’s first stakeholder meeting on 25 March 2021. Participants included people living with rheumatoid arthritis or MSK pain as well as MAP Study researchers and representatives from Versus Arthritis.

People living with rheumatoid arthritis or MSK pain, researchers from GPPC and representatives from Versus Arthritis met to discuss findings and plan next steps for the Multimorbidity in Arthritis and Persistent Musculoskeletal Pain (MAP) Study.

The study is exploring the presence and experience of having two or more long term conditions in people with persistent musculoskeletal pain and is in particular looking at how the presence of a number of health conditions affects people’s capacity to manage.

Researchers are close to completing work to look at the experiences of people with persistent musculoskeletal pain. Work involves statistical analysis of UK Biobank and the Scottish Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (SERA) cohorts databases, as well as qualitative interviews with patients and healthcare professionals.

The Stakeholder Workshop used a "townhall meeting" format: following a brief introduction to the MAP Study, workshop participants split into smaller groups and discussed themes from the findings of the research. The themes discussed were: "What makes life easier – improving quality of life", "Using health and health services", "Managing fatigue" and "The impact of COVID-19 on daily living".

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive and researchers and participants are looking forward to the next workshop to be held in July 2021. 

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First published: 14 March 2018