Health OpenSpaces

Too often, conversations about the future of healthcare happen without the voices of those who will be most impacted by the decisions made.

Health OpenSpaces is a UK Young Academy initiative aimed at creating spaces where participants from across society can actively shape the agenda, engage in discussions, and share valuable insights to shake up the future of healthcare.

How does it work?

By bringing together a mix of professionals, researchers, patients, artists, policymakers, commissioners, and advocacy groups, forums provide inclusive spaces where diverse perspectives connect and create change. With a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration and attendees’ background anonymised, this project ensures that everyone’s voices are heard, valued, and can make a difference.

Built on partnerships with professional open-space organisations, Health OpenSpaces is designed with scalability in mind, providing a framework that can be adapted to address a range of healthcare challenges.

The approach

Starting with one workshop focused on a particularly difficult question, the project will quickly be able to influence social conversations and have a concrete impact, while creating a clear process for reuse. This structure creates both immediate change within the HealthOpen Spaces project itself as well as a sustainable model for centring underrepresented voices in healthcare research going forward.

For its first forum, Health OpenSpaces centred around the question: “What would it take to change the underrepresentation of pregnancy in medical research?”

This question reflects growing public and professional attention to the inadequacies and inequities in healthcare aimed at women, while being specific enough to have a productive, targeted conversation that is nonetheless relevant to many different fields.

Project outcomes

• Annual Health OpenSpaces event: these events will bring together professionals, researchers, patients, policymakers, advocacy groups, and other community members to promote innovative thinking and solutions in healthcare.
• Structured mentoring: Each Health OpenSpaces event will include a structured mentorship programme pairing early-career professionals with experienced cross-sector leaders. This supports professional development, knowledge-sharing, and cultivates future leaders versed in collaborative, community-driven healthcare innovation.
• Concrete outputs, communicated: Each event will produce concrete outputs, such as creative representations, policy briefs, or other documentation, designed to engage broader audiences beyond the academy, alongside expert-derived recommendations.
• Creating a mode: To extend its impact, Health OpenSpaces will develop a flexible, adaptable event model that provides a foundation for future interdisciplinary collaborations, enabling communities to address diverse healthcare challenges sustainably over time.

Reach out to enquiries@ukyoungacademy.org to connect with the project team.