Help Shape Inclusive Musculoskeletal (MSK) Research: Volunteer Resource Curator Wanted

Bring data scientists and interdisciplinary musculoskeletal experts together to tackle health inequity for the benefit of the wider community.

As people live longer, musculoskeletal (MSK) disease and injury are rising. Age-related bone degeneration reduces independence through increased falls and fractures, and MSK conditions often intersect with other long-term conditions. The scale is sobering: hip fractures are projected to reach 6.3 million by 2050, and diabetic lower-limb amputations now exceed 7,000 per year in the UK and 70,000 in the USA. Crucially, the burden is not shared equally. MSK prevalence and outcomes vary by gender, age, race and ethnicity. Preclinical sex bias in skeletal research (Sharma et al., 2023) can compound gender-linked inequalities. Deprivation is directly tied to worse MSK care access, outcomes, and quality of life.

Our MSK Theme: What We Are Building Together

In partnership with FortisNet, an interdisciplinary MSK community within the Institute of Life Sciences at the University of Southampton, our DSxHE Musculoskeletal Theme convenes diverse expertise to understand and reduce inequities across MSK care and research.

We connect people across:

• Regenerative medicine, physiology, engineering, and orthopaedics

• Prosthetics and orthotics, rehabilitation, and assistive technologies

• Epidemiology, pre-clinical research, clinical trial design, and global health

• Community stakeholders, including patients, carers, and front-line clinicians

Our goals:

• Improve lives through more inclusive evidence and better-targeted treatments

• Accelerate MSK technologies to market, with equity built in from the start

• Grow new partnerships across clinical, academic, industry, and community settings

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We are looking for a…Volunteer Resource Curator

We are seeking a detail-oriented, curious person to help find, organise, and share high-quality MSK equity resources. Your work will make it easier for researchers, clinicians, engineers, and community partners to use the best available evidence quickly.

Possible ways you might help

• Curate resources: papers, datasets, algorithms, methods, case studies, tools, policy and guidelines, patient-reported outcome measures, implementation playbooks

• Tag and structure our shared library by population, condition such as osteoarthritis, back pain, and fragility fracture, modality such as imaging, sensors, and EHR, and equity lens such as sex and gender, ethnicity, deprivation, and disability

• Spot gaps and propose mini-syntheses such as equitable gait datasets, sex-balanced preclinical MSK models, and MSK outcome measures validated across populations

• Support events by helping line up speakers for lightning talks and journal clubs on inclusive MSK research and practice

• Write short round-ups so the community can quickly grasp what is new and why it matters

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Why volunteer

• Real impact: your curation directly supports fairer MSK research, innovation, and care

• Grow your profile: publish short summaries, co-author blogs, and showcase your curation work

• Learn by doing: evidence synthesis, data and resource management, community organising, and science communication

• Network widely: collaborate with FortisNet researchers, clinicians, engineers, data scientists, and patient advocates

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Examples of resources you might curate

• Inclusive MSK datasets such as imaging, sensors and actigraphy, EHR, and registries with demographic transparency

• Outcome measures validated across populations such as pain, function, quality of life, and return to work

• Guidance on reducing sex bias in preclinical skeletal models and equitable trial design checklists

• Implementation case studies including assistive technology, virtual rehabilitation, and community-led programmes

• Tooling for bias assessment, stratified performance reporting, and fairness-aware modelling

How to get involved or get more info

Email info@datascienceforhealthequity.com

If you are passionate about fair, evidence-based MSK care and you love turning scattered information into clear, useful knowledge, we would love to hear from you.