Category: project-02

Changing behaviour to improve adherence to asthma medication

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CLAHRC behaviour change researchers and PhDs Caroline Katzer and Marissa Mes were a big hit at the recent in ESPACOMP conference in Budapest Hungary. Caroline and Marissa presented to an audience of clinicians and allied health professionals interested in adherence

ESPACOMP (European Society for Patient Adherence, COMpliance and Persistence) promotes science concerned with the assessment of what patients do with medicines they have been prescribed – and the implications when they adhere, or don’t adhere to them. Their 2017 conference brought together behaviour change practitioners and researchers from across the world and both Marissa and Caroline’s presentation generated much interest and a host of questions from the audience.

Both Caroline and Marissa are conducting their PhDs as as part of our wider work examining the effectiveness of  the ‘Perceptions and Practicalities Intervention’ (PAPI) in improving adherence to asthma medication.

 

Marissa (above) is investigating the effectiveness of pharmacists as the delivery channel of a theory-based intervention to support medication adherence in adults with asthma.

Caroline is focusing her PhD on developing the PAPI intervention to support adherence to maintenance treatment in adult asthma patients.

Both fielded questions from pharmacists interested in how their research/academic findings were going to be translated into pharmacy practice, and how feasible this would be.

The role of board-level clinical leaders in quality improvement

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CLAHRC researcher Dr Lorelei Jones has been invited to deliver a seminar on the role of clinical leaders on NHS boards in quality improvement (QI).

The Health Services Research Centre is a leading authority on health care management and has invited Lorelei as part of their prestigious events series.

The poster below gives an overview of what she will be covering.

Dr Jones is part of our iQUASER study looking at how NHS boards implement QUASER – a dialogical tool for senior hospital leaders to develop and implement QI strategies across their organisation.

Lorelei will be presenting some results from her extensive fieldwork among NHS boards for this research, which involved interviewing board members, observing meetings and scrutinising papers and documents.

Funding success to develop research on vitamin B12 trial for pregnant women in India

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Professor Monica Lakhanpaul, Principal Investigator on our NEON study has successfully applied for funding to develop a major research programme addressing the needs of women and children in India.

Professor Lakhanpaul (pictured below) is leading an application in respond to a call supported by a number of organisations from the UK and India (see below) under the title Global Research Programme; addressing the health needs of women and children in disadvantaged populations globally

The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) in India, in collaboration with Department of International Development(DFID), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC) joint call to fund global health research addressing the health needs of women and children

Successful applicants will build partnerships across the UK and India to execute research that will impact the ability to prevent, diagnose and manage prevalent chronic and infectious diseases facing women and their unborn children in low-and middle-income (LMIC).

By successfully navigating the initial round of the application process (“the concept proposal”) Professor Lakhanpaul has secured a £4000 travel grant to support the development of a partnership for the full proposal development process. Her initial concept proposal was for a vitamin on vitamin B12 trial in pregnant women and children in India.

A full proposal will be made in September for the larger pot of funding.

Monica’s work with the Bangladeshi community in East London is also referenced in a recent blog Can women talking save lives? Reducing inequalities in newborn mortality in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Malawi

 

CLAHRC PhD student Ryan Palmer enjoys success at the Health Services Research UK conference

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CLAHRC PhD student Ryan Palmer enjoyed success at the recent prestigious Health Services Research UK conference in Nottingham.

Ryan (pictured above) is a Health Foundation Improvement Science PhD Student working under the primary supervision of Professor Martin Utley.

His research, part of our Methodological Innovation theme, focuses on patient flow between community and hospital services and he won one of the runner up prizes for best oral presentation held at the conference, which brings together researchers and NHS organisations, alongside third sector bodies, professional groups and private sector associates.

Ryan’s poster (below) and oral presentation focused on patient flow within community healthcare.

Ryan is based at one of our CLAHRC partner organisations – North East London NHS foundation Trust – where is he is helping the Trusts leaders and managers model patient flow and referral patterns so they can better design and plan services.

Helping the NHS visualise complex referral data

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The NHS generates huge amounts of data but using it to track patient flow and pathways of care requires sophisticated mathematical modelling. CLAHRC PhD student, Ryan Palmer, is “embedded” within one of our partner organisations – North East London Foundation Trust (NELFT) – where part of his work involves offering support and guidance to managers and staff interested in getting the most out of the data they routinely collect.

An example of Ryan’s visualisation of referral patterns between hospital and community services in a busy NHS Trust.

Ryan ran a successful workshop hosted by our research partners NELFT training healthcare professionals how to use network mapping methods for understanding referral data in community healthcare. Care leads who attended came from a range of healthcare disciplines and services, including paediatrics, adult physical health, mental health services and social care.

The two-hour session involved: how to prepare data, how to create network diagrams and the beginnings of discussions as to how these methods may be used to inform service planning. Interest was generated during the session, with many realising the benefits of these methods.

Visualising referral data helps researchers and care managers to work together and understand otherwise overwhelming and hard to interpret data for complex systems. These network maps highlight important characteristics of referral activity and can help identify services that exhibit interesting dynamics. Sharing this work with healthcare professionals, they helped to stimulate further conversations around the analysis and organisation of referrals in community healthcare services.

Our collaborators are currently seeking to implement a single point access (SPA) for older adult community services. This session formed part of the ongoing work with our collaborators to help inform their thinking in designing this SPA.

Photograph selected in competition for UCL India Voices poster

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Congratulations go out to Jennifer Martin, who has had an image she took in India chosen to represent the UCL India Voices project in 2017.

A PhD student with the Nurture Early for Optimal Nutrition (NEON) project, Jennifer took the picture while conducting research with women in Mumbai. After submitting it to a UCL photography competition, Jennifer’s photograph was selected as the image for UCL India Voices poster.

Advertising UCL’s Grand Challenge of Cultural Understanding India Voices cross-disciplinary programme of film, debate and the arts, the poster can be seen across UCL.

Details of the India Voices programme can be found on the UCL Grand Challenges website.