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Big Life shows HeaRRT to the world

This week, Stephanie Walker, Big Life’s Transformation Manager, presented at the Health Services Research UK conference in Manchester, showcasing research on the group’s innovative Healing from Racism and Racial Trauma (HeaRRT) programme, just weeks after a research paper was published on the subject in a major academic journal.

The research explores the impact of HearTT, as a non-clinical, community based resource for those affected by racism and racial trauma. The first cohort of HeaRTT ran for 12 weeks with people from Black African and Caribbean heritage. Through a series of group sessions, it looked to:

• Build resilience among group participants to navigate racial trauma

• Build self-esteem

• Build collective racial identity

• Equip participants with self-management strategies

• Reduce isolation.

Drawing on lived experience leadership and co-production, HeaRRT explicitly challenges the assumption that responses to racial trauma must sit solely in clinical services, and instead tests a model that centres safety, connection, cultural humility and collective healing in community spaces.

The research uses both qualitative and quantitative data, to explore not only outcomes from HeaRTT’s first cohort, but also how different groups experience and access this kind of support, including barriers, enablers and perceived impact on everyday functioning and wellbeing.

The findings show reduced internalised stigma and a stronger, more inclusive ethnic-racial identity. Results also indicate improved coping, especially through relational and community-based strategies. Together, these findings suggest the HeaRRT intervention strengthens both identity and coping, offering a collective, strengths-based alternative to individualistic clinical models.

Steph was able to share this innovative approach with an international audience from the world of health and research this week. She said: “To have such a wide platform to share our research was a great opportunity – and I got the chance to see what other people were doing in similar spaces. It put us alongside some really large institutions and shows that Big Life can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them and lead the way.

“We have a real challenge to change the mindset of clinicians and academics, to prove that non-clinical approaches like HeaRTT should be embraced as complementary to traditional clinical therapies. Importantly, they’re more in tune with what people want, and put people and cultural compassion at the centre. It feels like it really demonstrates the Big Life Way.”

So what’s next for HeaRTT? A new cohort of participants from South Asian communities is underway, and we will carry out research on its effectiveness. Steph is also working on producing a mini six-week version, and a train the trainer model. As Steph says: “We need to keep writing about it and championing it; it’s our responsibility to disrupt the status quo and make things better for our communities!”

Our research paper on HeaRTT has now been published in the Mental Health and Social Inclusion journal. You can find the full research manuscript here.