VTCT Foundation London Showcase: 8th July 2022

VTCT Foundation London Showcase: 8th July 2022

A Collaborative Approach To Male-focused Support Or

Using Research To Reach Under-represented Groups

When VTCT Foundation first conceived the Appearance Collective, one of its key goals was to help facilitate greater collaboration between like-minded organisations.

It was therefore especially gratifying to hear Kerry Montgomery from Alopecia UK and Fabio Zucchelli from The Centre for Appearance Research use their talk at the 2022 London Showcase to explain how VTCT has helped their most recent research to better understand the support needs of men with alopecia.

How did your two organisations come to work together?

[KERRY] We first met at the 2019 VTCT Showcase, where each of us were presenting recent activities. We got chatting, and this project was born from a discussion we had during one of the networking breaks.

As a charity, we’d already recognised that – whilst men were emailing and calling us – they engaged less with our other support channels, particularly our focus groups. As an all-female team, we wanted to be clear what we should be doing to improve engagement levels. And key to this was understanding what men wanted to ensure anything we adapted or introduced truly overcame any barriers so we could be confident we were offering the best targeted support provision for all.

[FABIO] This project is the first time we’ve worked together, and it’s a successful collaboration that we’re already in the process of extending.

Thanks to our successful joint VTCT small grants application, we were able to run research to better understand the support needs of men with alopecia. This came in part from realising there was a real gap in literature for men with Alopecia Areata, so we followed this up with a deep dive into the lived experience of men living with the condition. The process started with a survey study followed by smaller interviews in which we were able to understand the male experience of accessing support through Alopecia UK, as well as other organisations, and their preferred type of help.

How will the funding and the projects’ key findings benefit men with hair loss?

[FABIO] In terms of preferred support group styles, we discovered that the very specific experience of male alopecia means there is a general preference for non-mixed group styles – a really important finding that helped Alopecia UK best tailor their psychosocial support activities and ensure they were gender relevant.

[KERRY] One big piece of work that we were able to achieve thanks to the VTCT funding was a video of a small group of men discussing their experiences of living with alopecia. London Showcase attendees enjoyed an exclusive preview of it earlier this summer and we confident that the video will prove an invaluable tool for male visitors to our website, as well as a good way to reach more people via our social media channels. However, it’s important to add how much the men in the video got out of the experience themselves – they didn’t stop talking for two hours, and it really served to highlight the benefits of men-only support offerings.

What are your biggest learnings from your experience?

[KERRY] It’s certainly been valuable to be able to bring academia and charities together for a common goal – from Alopecia UK’s side, the research elements helped provide the necessary insights to shape future activities and know that they are based on a pragmatic research agenda.

From a research perspective, we’re used to working at a different pace to charities, so it was important that we recognised the need to fit the research process into their time-limited demands.

Without the VTCT funding it’s likely that we would have conducted our own research separately, but by working together we’ve been better able to make practical recommendations and influence the charity’s activities in a realistic way that fits within the parameters of existing resources and the team’s capacity.

[KERRY] The experience has already had a positive impact across many of our areas and influenced the support we offer, from blogs and videos to a new dedicated area of the website showcasing our findings.

It’s been great to get this project funded by VTCT, and be able to actually a see an idea through from concept to fruition! It’s also been interesting to bring gender to the field of alopecia and avoid any potential for subconscious bias in our programme of activities. And we’re excited that the success of our partnership has already led to new funding applications including a joint project on the socioeconomic burden of alopecia areata, which we are sure will deliver very interesting findings and hopefully have long-term benefits for alopecia sufferers.

Ultimately, what our experience shows is how invaluable connections made at these sorts of events are. Not only is it helpful to talk to other charities and see how others are approaching challenges, or what ways of working they’ve introduced, but it’s a really helpful way for those of us in this niche field to come together to problem solve and better support everyone living with a visible difference.