We will ensure that all activities are grounded in lived experience, with people and communities as equal partners in research, governance, and dissemination.
This promotes accountability and ensure relevance in relation to community engagement and co-production across all themes and workstreams.
Tackling maternity inequalities requires more than academic insight—it calls for shared power, genuine listening, and long-term partnerships with the communities most affected. The CECP core function will place community engagement and co-production at the heart of the consortium, ensuring that marginalised, disadvantaged and unheard communities are fully included and that all research is shaped by the lived experiences of women, families, and communities facing the greatest inequalities.
The CECP core function establishes programme-wide standards for engagement and supports co‑production across all workstreams and themes, ensuring that engagement is structured, meaningful and proportionate across the programme. Through coordinated feedback mechanisms, CECP ensures that lived experience perspectives inform ongoing programme refinement, contribute to the development of programme best practice, dissemination and strengthen programme legacy.
This core function is committed to building lasting, equitable relationships based on shared goals—generating and sharing evidence, strengthening community understanding and capacity, and mobilising knowledge to drive meaningful change. Together, this approach aims to deliver a step change in reducing maternity inequalities, with impact extending well beyond the lifetime of the Maternity Disparities Consortium.