Centres for Exchange: equity and diversity in research participation

Our Centres for Exchange programme seeks to re-envision how knowledge is exchanged between health researchers and the communities most affected by health challenges.  

The aim is to find, test, and share approaches that diverse communities, researchers, and research funders can use to ensure health research is inclusive and impactful for those whose health has the most to gain. 

Established in 2023, Centres for Exchange is a collaborative learning programme, funded and supported by Wellcome. The programme is co-developed and driven by partners located in or working with communities around the world. 

The aims of the programme are to: 

• Better understand knowledge exchange in health research
• Ensure that research is responsive to local social and political contexts and needs
• Design more effective, meaningful and reciprocal ways for communities to collaborate in research and research ecosystems
• Identify how Wellcome and other funders could support or resource this infrastructure, building on existing community assets and structures 

When research is led from and undertaken with affected communities, the resulting insights have a head start towards being implemented and impactful in the real world. That’s because the research is then directly informed by people’s needs, and the outputs are more relevant, trusted and accessible. 

Research agendas and knowledge production are typically determined by those who lead and fund the research. This approach can exclude communities from having a say in health research that affects them, leading to their needs being overlooked and expertise being ignored.  

Communities are essential partners and experts in health research and need to be involved from the start, in agenda setting and the design of projects, through to implementing solutions. This is vital so that research, knowledge exchange and any outcomes or solutions can achieve their aims and be truly impactful in the real world. 

Find out more about issues around community engagement.

The design phase of the programme has been completed. This involved partners in South Africa, India, Brazil, Mexico and Kenya co-creating guiding principles and strategies to support knowledge exchange.  

The work was informed by perspectives and practices in the social contexts where the partner organisations work. Insights were drawn from interviews and dialogue events with researchers, practitioners and lived experience experts.