An evaluation of diversity characteristics available in CRIS, and their use in research publications.

A new study will count how often NHS mental health research actually records patients’ ethnicity, gender, disability, and other protected characteristics. The problem is straightforward: clinical research that ignores diversity can produce results that do not apply to large parts of the population. For example, a treatment tested mostly on white men may work differently for women or for people from minority ethnic backgrounds. The Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS) system holds anonymised data from millions of NHS mental health patients, but no one has systematically checked how many of the studies using that data report the diversity of their participants. This project will audit CRIS publications against the nine protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010, plus other social factors researchers consider important. If the audit reveals gaps, the findings could change how mental health research is designed and reported. Funders and journal editors might require diversity data as standard. Clinicians would gain treatments and guidelines built on evidence that actually reflects the patients they treat. The impact here is on the infrastructure of research itself—the data standards, reporting norms, and analytical habits that quietly shape what counts as reliable medical knowledge.