Blogs
De-implementation of low value mental health care: a PhD update.
Qandeel Shah (September 2023)
PhD student Qandeel gives us an update on her de-implementation research that she presented on at the UK Implementation Science Research Conference, and also some reflections on the conference itself. Qandeel's research will identify low value mental health care from the service-user perspective and identify ways to address this. This is an important topic as in so doing, health professionals' time is freed up to provide more evidence-based high value care, and service-users have a better experience. Read Qandeel’s blog here.
Is “Winter pressure” on urgent and emergency care now seen all year?
Jen Lewis, Richard Jacques, Rebecca Simpson, Madina Hasan, Susan Croft, Simone Croft, Ross McMurray, Suzanne Mason & Regional Linked Data Consortium (September 2023)
As we head into Winter, urgent and emergency care services in the NHS prepare for additional demand associated with the colder months. But recent research funded by the NIHR and HDRUK suggests that the highest levels of demand previously only seen during Winter are now affecting urgent care services year round. Read more in the blog here.
Working with Evidence Synthesis: My experience as a Healthy Minds Apprentice
Chloe Parech (September 2023)
For Youth Mental Health Day 2023, we are sharing a new blog from Chloe, a Healthy Minds apprentice about her experiences in working with evidence synthesis in our Mental and Physical Multimorbidity theme. Read Chloe’s blog here.
Karen Spilsbury and Carl Thompson (August 2023)
People living in care homes want the best care possible and staff working in care homes want to provide it. One essential tool in achieving this mission is research. There has been growth in care home research in the past decade. Engaging in research requires dedication and resources. We outline questions that will support discussions between care staff, residents and their families and friends, prior to partnering with a research team and committing to participating in any research. Read more in the blog here.
A glimpse into my life growing up as a British Pakistani - #SouthAsianHeritageMonth
Farhat Mahmood (August 2023)
To celebrate South Asian Heritage Month 2023, we asked Farhat, a Research Fellow with the Older People with Frailty theme, to share a glimpse into her life growing up in Britain as a Pakistani immigrant. Read her story here.
The BaBi Network – Building Research Capacity
Sam Debbage and Kate Robinson (July 2023)
In this blog, Sam Debbage, Research Capacity Building Lead for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Yorkshire and Humber (ARC YH) explains how The Born and Bred In (BaBi) Network has increased research capacity in a number of Trusts over the last year, and what this means for Yorkshire and Humber families. The BaBi Study, part of the Healthy Childhood theme within our ARC is a longitudinal cohort study to connect individual (anonymised) routine data across organisations. Read more in the blog here.
My day at BiBFest; a day of great food, great music, and great science!
Evan Seaman (July 2023)
Evan Seaman, Sports Journalism Student at Leeds Trinity University and Social Media Manager at Ilkley Town AFC, details his experiences covering Day 1 of BiBFest 2023, Born In Bradford's science festival. Day 1 (for Bradford's young people) brought something entirely new to the fold, as all activities, talks, stalls, and entertainment were led by young people themselves, giving young people a platform to express what’s most important to them, and share their thoughts on how we can all work together to support health and wellbeing across the district. Read more in the blog here.
Ben Lorimer (June 2023)
Avoidable risks including lack of physical activity, poor diet, obesity, and smoking, have been identified as significant contributors to the major health inequality experienced by people with severe mental ill health. Findings from the Closing the Gap Health Study showed that whilst people with SMI are more likely to engage in health risk behaviours compared to the general population, they are just as likely to want to make lifestyle changes to improve their health. It is vital that health care practitioners support them to do so. Read the blog here.
Using routinely-collected educational data to identify health needs and vulnerabilities
Dr Megan Wood, Dr Amy Atkinson, Dr Lydia Gunning, and Mallory Morehead (June 2023)
There is a special educational needs (SEN) crisis in the UK, where children with SEN are being identified too late. Researchers at the Centre for Applied Education Research, the University of Leeds, and Lancaster University have been investigating whether schools' routinely-collected data an help identify children with SEN. They have found that outcomes from a statutory assessment, the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile, can identify children who are at considerably increased risk of needing SEN support in the future. Find out more here.
Amy Barnes (June 2023)
A child’s early life is a critical time, shaping their lifelong health and wellbeing. Better Start Bradford, Born in Bradford and our ARC’s Early Life and Prevention theme, share their learning from the Best Start programme to help people who are designing and implementing the government’s new #FamilyHubs and #Best Start for Life programme. Read the blog here.
Simplifying implementation science
Dr Zuneera Khurshid and Dr Kristian Hudson (May 2023)
In this blog, our implementation team talk about the gap that exists between research and practice, especially in the healthcare sector. Implementation Science can provide the tools and methods to bridge this gap. However, doing this would require moving away from traditional research methods and making research more rapid, relevant, and responsive so that it is grounded in the complex realties that healthcare teams operate in.
The implementation team of the Improvement Academy is aiming to work across disciplines and research methods and help researchers and practitioners recognise that implementation should be considered a common theme across all research. Read the full blog here.
Economic Evaluation Online Resource
Matt Franklin, Sebastian Hinde and Ruby Bhatti (April 2023)
Economics is a discipline broadly concerned with how society allocates its limited resources among alternative uses, whereby Health Economics is mainly concerned with health and social care resources. As such, Health Economics is an important part of resource allocation decision-making when using taxpayers’ money to fund health and social care services. There are several tools Health Economists use to produce evidence which can aid and guide associated decision-making processes.
As part of the NIHR Public Health Research (PHR) project – Unlocking Data to Inform Public Health Policy and Practice (aka. Unlocking Data project) – the researchers, with support from the YH ARC Co-Chair for the PPIE Leadership Group, have developed an online resource which explains how one of these tools, Economic Evaluation, can be used in a health setting. Read more about this important resource in this blog here.
Are we breathing dirtier air at home than outside?
Dr Erika Ikeda (March 2023)
Why do we care about air pollution indoors? Our Healthy Childhood theme's new project, INGENIOUS, studies indoor air quality. Read more about this project in our latest blog here.
Andria Hanbury (February 2023)
This blog discusses what improvement science is, provides a brief overview of the improvement science team and their expertise, and links to improvement science projects and resources. Read the blog here.
Dr Lesley Brown and Sarah Hallas (January 2023)
The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a paradigm shift in how we work. As a result, we have developed new ways to conduct research remotely; methods such as over the telephone, postal questionnaires, web-form submissions and video-conferencing have been used to conduct assessments. With over a year of these methods under our belt, how have we done? Find out more here.
People with severe mental illness are at greater risk of obesity #NationalObesityAwarenessWeek
Dr Liz Newbronner (January 2023)
People with severe mental illness (SMI) are at greater risk of becoming obese but obesity is a common comorbidity experienced by people with SMI, which can be prevented and treated. In this blog we discuss some of the reasons why people with SMI are more vulnerable to obesity and highlight the support needed to help them achieve or maintain a healthy weight. Find out more here.
Dr Philippa Shaw, Dr Zuneera Khurshid & Gemma Copsey (November 2022)
People with severe mental illness are more likely to have poor cardiovascular health. The UCLP-Primrose pathway guides primary care practitioners to provide wraparound mental and physical care and social support for these patients. Find out more here.
Ashfaque Talpur (November 2022)
Better research leads to better services for the public. The NIHR Your Path in Research 2022 campaign, highlights how people can make research part of their career.
Ashfaque Talpur, Research Fellow within our Capacity Building theme at Yorkshire and Humber ARC, shares his story of how he started a career in research after qualifying as a nurse in Pakistan. Read his story here.
Yorkshire and Humber ARC's PPIE Leadership & Support Group (PLSG): Claire Marsh, Christine Smith, Ruby Bhatti, Joyce Fox (November 2022)
In this blog, our patient and public involvement team reflect on the process of involving people in the setting of ARC research priorities. The blog proposes that a priorities list can evolve over time as more voices are heard, and context changes. In this approach, priority setting can be conceived as a way of building long-term relationships, instead of as a one-off exercise.
Alison Ellwood (November 2022)
Better research leads to better services for the public. The NIHR Your Path in Research 2022 campaign, highlights how people can make research part of their career.
Alison Ellwood, PhD student in the Older People with Frailty theme at ARC Yorkshire and Humber, shares her story of how she started a career in research. Read her story here.
Qandeel Shah, Megan Smith, and Bethany Pritchard (October 2022)
In this blog you are introduced to three PhD students and their projects within our Improvement Science theme at the Yorkshire & Humber ARC. Megan Smith, Bethany Pritchard and Qandeel Shah discuss their projects and the impact they hope to achieve for healthcare staff, patients and the service. Read more in our latest blog.
Dr Emily Peckham (October 2022)
Oral health is an often-neglected health inequality for people with severe mental ill health (SMI). The consequences of poor oral health can be serious and people who live with SMI are more likely to have poorer oral health compared to people without mental ill health. 'The Right To Smile' consensus sets out what oral care people with SMI can expect. Read more in our latest blog.
Dr Lizzie Taylor Buck and Amanda Lane (September 2022)
Read why PROMs are important for the NHS Community Mental Health (CMH) transformation, and why ReQoL-10 is one of the three PROMs recommended by the CMH Task and Finish Group on outcome measurement for use in services for adults with Severe Mental Illness (SMI). Find out more in this blog.
Dr Catherine Quinn (September 2022)
This year World Alzheimer’s month has a focus on post-diagnostic support in dementia. Dr Catherine Quinn is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Applied Dementia Studies where she teaches modules on post-diagnostic support and has conducted research in this area. In this blog, Catherine shares her thoughts on how access to good post-diagnostic support can enable people to live ‘well’ with dementia.
Ragy Tadrous (August 2022)
Ragy Tadrous, PhD student within our Older people with frailty theme, shares insights from his work on reducing sedentary behaviour in older adults and the importance of social support in accomplishing this. Read here.
Olivia Taylor and Dr Liz Newbronner (July 2022)
In this blog you can find out more about a digital upskilling project aiming to evaluate how best to support people with Severe Mental Ill Health (SMI) in taking part in digital courses. Read here.
Alice Cunningham (April 2022)
Implementation science is defined as the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of research findings and other evidence-based practices into routine practice, and, hence, to improve the quality and effectiveness of health services. It is a relatively new science and has been growing over the last two decades; this blog looks at experiences of a new implementation research fellow! Read here.
Kayley Ciesla (April 2022)
The BaBi Network is an evolving multisite cohort study including interested groups of clinicians and researchers from maternity units across England, and the Born in Bradford (BiB) research programme. We are excited to launch the new website which showcases the network currently comprising of five sites in Bradford, Leeds, Doncaster, Wakefield and East London. Read more about this in our latest blog.
Matt Franklin (March 2022)
The Universities of Sheffield, York, and Leeds joined forces with Local Authorities and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) from Sheffield and York areas, and the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record (YHCR) to ‘unlock’ the potential of routinely collected real-world data to promote and protect health and prevent ill-health in local and regional settings.
Find out how they did it, what they discovered and how the research will change health and social care. Read more about this in our latest blog.
Andria Hanbury (February 2022)
In this blog, our Improvement Science theme walks through an ongoing evaluation of a digital device being rolled out across the Yorkshire and Humber region for piloting. Read more about this in our latest blog.
Liz Graham (January 2022)
Researchers within our Older People with Frailty theme have identified existing research priorities for older people reported in the literature, and obtained the views of older people living with frailty on those that are most important to them. These priorities will inform future research to benefit older people living with frailty. Read more about this in our latest blog.
Colin O'Keefe and Prof Sue Mason (December 2021)
In this blog, our Urgent and Emergency Care theme look at real world linked dataset ‘The CUREd Database’ and its potential to provide solutions to the challenges facing urgent and emergency care.
Dr Liz Newbronner, Dr Ruth Wadman & Olivia Taylor (November 2021)
Continuing the journey of finding out the most important questions to research for people living with both physical and mental health issues. Read our latest blog from our Mental and Physical Multimorbidity theme for the progress so far and our plans for the future!
Kristian Hudson (September 2021)
In this three-part blog series, our implementation specialist shares the insights and learning he gained from talking to implementation experts around the world when he set out to answer the question of "how to implement?". It turns out that knowing 'how to' practically implement and sustain interventions into the long term requires more than academic implementation knowledge. It also requires the generation of practical implementation knowledge on the ground and Kristian concludes with a possible approach of how to achieve this.
Christine Smith (September 2021)
In this blog, our Public Involvement Leads introduce the quality improvement approach we're using in order to understand how our public involvement makes a difference.
Amanda Lane (August 2021)
The 2021 PROMs Conference was held earlier in June this year, after being postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Our Health Economics, Evaluation and Equality theme talk about their thoughts and reflections from running this conference virtually in this blog.
Claire Marsh (August 2021)
The YH ARC reflects on strengths and weaknesses in our attempts to involve and engage communities in our research during Covid in this blog, and the lessons this has taught us about inclusivity and relationships.
Helen Smith (July 2021)
Recruiting older people to participate in qualitative research projects can be challenging and proved even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic! This blog outlines the various strategies used by Dr Helen Smith and colleagues in the Improvement Science and Older People with Frailty themes to identify and recruit people aged over 75 years to a study about barriers and facilitators to shorter hospital stays.
Lesley Brown (June 2021)
The Yorkshire and Humber ARC’s Older People with Frailty theme share news of a remote model of CARE75+ which is being rolled out in response to social distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read our latest blog to understand more about this new approach, named CARE75+ REMOTE.
Colin O’Keeffe and Suzanne Ablard (May 2021)
Successfully introducing and integrating innovative workforce roles such as the Advanced Care Practitioners (ACPs) into different healthcare settings is challenging, but can provide benefits to staff, patients and services. .
This blog describes the workforce evaluations undertaken at ScHARR, University of Sheffield, including two ARC UEC Theme projects evaluating ACPs. This work is crucial to understanding how these workforce innovations can be successful in the future.
Dr Panos Spanakis and Dr Ruth Wadman (April 2021)
Access to the internet and knowing how to use digital devices are important for everyday life and work. A new survey study is investigating whether people with severe mental ill-health (SMI) have the essential digital skills to engage with the online world. Read more in this blog.
Dr Daniel Bingham and Dr Sally Barber (March 2021)
Since the first national lockdown in March 2020, the Bradford C-SAG have looked at the changes in children's physical activity in Bradford and why some children remained more active than others. Learn more about what this means for COVID-19 recovery plans in this blog.
Kristian Hudson (February 2021)
In October last year, Kristian Hudson, our Implementation Specialist, started asking experts around the world how they envisaged applying implementation frameworks to practical settings like those in the NHS. Learn more about this in this blog.
Prof Rebecca Lawton, Raabia Sattar and Sally Bridges (February 2021)
As Sir Simon Stevens, NHS Chief Executive, announces a national network of 40 mental health hubs for NHS staff, our colleagues in the Improvement Science theme are keen to understand the experiences of NHS staff working with patients during the first Covid-19 wave. Read this blog to learn more.
Dr Lizzie Taylor Buck, Amanda Lane, Dr Christine Smith, Dr Anju Keetharuth, Professor Tracey Young, and Professor Jo Cooke (January 2021)
Recovering Quality of Life (ReQoL) is a PROM that was specifically designed to measure mental health service users’ perspectives of recovery and quality of life. In this blog, learn how our Health Economics, Equality and Evaluation theme have used the World Cafe process to develop a ReQoL CoP.
Prof Rosie McEachan, Rukhsana Rashid, Ishfaq Vaja and Sally Bridges (January 2021)
The impact of low air quality has been a key topic of discussion for the Government, with leaders calling for tougher action. Read this blog to see how the BiB Breathes project is tackling air pollution in Bradford.
Dr Bridget Lockyer and Dr Josie Dickerson (January 2021)
COVID-19 vaccines are seen as the route out of the current pandemic and a solution to stop the NHS becoming overwhelmed. However, this will only be the case if those most at risk of becoming severely ill are happy to receive the vaccine. Read our newest blog which shares key insights into COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the city of Bradford.
Dr Luke Budworth (January 2021)
Uncertainty is widespread in many aspects of healthcare. Patients present with an infinite combination of complaints, comorbidities, demographics, preferences and more. As such, doctors and other health professionals must learn to make decisions in an environment both high in uncertainty and with high stakes. Learn more about the Tolerance of Uncertainty (TofU) project looking at whether Emergency Doctors’ Tolerance of Uncertainty can impact on patient outcomes and resource use.
Alison Ellwood (November 2020)
Alison Ellwood, PhD student within our Older people with frailty theme, shares insights from her work around the long-term impacts of social distancing measures on the those living with physical frailty and cognitive impairment.
Dr Jen Lewis (October 2020)
The ‘NHS 111 first’ scheme is currently being piloted in parts of England, a system that recommends all patients should call NHS 111 first before visiting the Emergency Department. Read more about our Urgent and Emergency Care theme's analysis of NHS 111 calls and whether patients complied with NHS 111 advice.
Prof Rosie McEachan and Rukhsana Rashid (October 2020)
In the UK, 64,000 deaths every year can be directly linked to poor air quality. To mark Clean Air Day 2020, our Early Life and Prevention theme have shared some insight into the plans being developed locally to improve air quality, reduce pollution and how any impact made on population health is going to be measured in the BiB Breathes project.
Ruth Wadman and Liz Newbronner (September 2020)
Learn more about the work being completed by our Mental and Physical Multimorbidity theme to ensure key members of the public and health and social care professionals, have a voice in deciding the most important questions to be answered by future research.
Chris Cartwright (August 2020)
Chris Cartwright, Early Life and Prevention theme Lead for the Yorkshire and Humber ARC, shares an update on the Bradford C-SAG group and highlights from theme research carried out over the last few months.
Beverley Slater (July 2020)
Beverley Slater, Director of the Improvement Academy and co-Implementation Lead for the Yorkshire and Humber ARC, writes about the challenges of sustaining new innovative ways of working after the COVID crisis has subsided. Beverley argues that concepts from implementation science can provide a useful way of thinking about this.
Ruth Simms-Ellis, Helen Smith and Luke Budworth (June 2020)
Chris Cartwright (April 2020)
Dr Lesley Brown (April 2020)
Maxine Kuczawski (March 2020)
Ruth Wadman (February 2020)
Dr Lesley Brown (October 2019)
