Category Archives: Media Coverage

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International media coverage for research linking flu vaccine with reduced risk of stroke

ipvastia_wordcloudA study from CaHRU, ‘Influenza vaccination and risk of stroke: self-controlled case-series study‘, recently published in the journal Vaccine, received international coverage in news media. The study of almost 18,000 patients with stroke looked at data from general practices in England using a self-controlled case series analysis, and showed that the risk of suffering a stroke is significantly reduced for up to two months after receiving a flu vaccine.

ipvastia_teamThe lead author was Dr Zahid Asghar, who conducted the research together with Prof Niro Siriwardena (both from CaHRU) and Dr Carol Coupland (from Nottingham University School of Community Health Sciences). This is the fourth in a series of studies over the past 10 years looking at the link between flu vaccination and reduction in risk of heart attack and stroke.

ipvastia_mediamapThe coverage included articles in The Times, Sun and Scottish Sun newspapers, BBC television and radio and online media outlets in the US, Middle East, Asia, Australasia and South America. The team are now designing future studies to explore the potential for flu vaccination to reduce risk of heart attack and stroke.

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HEI Challenge for Patient Supported Quality Improvement and Education in Healthcare PPI conference

The Higher Education Institution (HEI) Challenge for Patient Supported Quality Improvement and Education in Healthcare held its Patient and Public Involvement Working Group Conference at Loughborough University on 1st October 2015. This collaborative event formed a central part of the HEI Challenge. Led by the Patient and Public Involvement working group, the overall aim of the event was to provide a forum to focus and share achievements and help identify how Universities can support developments for the future; locally, regionally and more widely.

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RachelHawleyposterWho Attended? Just over fifty people attended the event, bringing together both staff and service user perspectives. Participating universities were represented by staff, service user and learner voices. People travelled from across the region from a range of voluntary and service user led organisation including; Healthwatch Nottinghamshire, British Heart Foundation National Centre for Physical Activity and Health, Leicester – Loughborough Biomedical Research Unit, CLASH – MSK, Alzheimer’s Action Alliance, Diabetes UK, and the Carers Federation.

HThe HEI Challenge Award 2014-15, from the East Midlands Academic Health Science Network, is a unique opportunity for East Midlands Universities to foster a sustainable approach to working collaboratively for the benefit of our population and to drive positive experiences and outcomes for learners and local employers. The ultimate goal of the HEI Challenge is to collaboration to share, develop, showcase and spread work across East Midlands and surrounding Universities around the unifying topic of healthcare quality improvement.

Loughborough5Overview and highlights of the day: Conference delegates were welcomed to the event by Kristen Clements. Together Kris and Rhian Last co lead the PPI working group. The day began with a two presentations on that addressed the HEI challenge for patient supported quality improvement and education in healthcare. Rachel Hawley, Project Manager began by providing an overview of the Challenge to set the context for the day. Professor Niro Siriwardena showcased examples of patient supported quality improvement.. Participants engaged in group discussions to explore what patient supported quality improvement means to them and their organisation, each working group capturing its essence in ways that will inform future guiding principles for practice.

102915_1047_HEIChalleng1.pngThe Street Activity: The lunch time period was filled with conversations and emerging collaborations. Ten service user led / voluntary sector organisations gathered in ‘The Street’ to participate in activities aimed at stimulating conversations, hopefully leading to new collaborative projects. Participants were invited to submit project ideas to be awarded funding – further information about these projects will be shared soon. Participants engaged in a range of activities along the way; from stepper machines, to Bollywood dancing.

The afternoon began by moving into workshops activities on the following themes:

  • Loughborough3Involvement and Inclusion in action: Shahnaz Aziz, EM-AHSN; Theo Stickley, University of Nottingham and and Julie Gosling, Making Waves
  • Bridging the gap for involvement in research, education and practice: Andrew Grundy, Nottingham University and Elizabeth Rye SUCRAN
  • To train or not to train? The development for involvement: Paula Wray CLAHRC
  • Assessment of impact – The value of patient stories: Rachel White – NHS England

Keynote Showcase: Transformational change and social innovation

Loughborough4The final session showcased staff and service users coming together to share their experiences through two presentations; Phil Smith, Kidney patient champion, Emma Watson, Kidney patient centre representative along with SCAD team members, Rebecca Pritchard and Catherine Beck. Experiences were shared that clearly showed the benefits of patient supported quality improvement in action; for staff, for service users and for the organisation.

A participant said: “That was a fantastic event. I thought the blend of academic input and service user experience was just right. Some of these events are valuable but exhausting. This time I found it valuable and energizing – and much more determined to push harder“.

[su_document url=”https://communityandhealth.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2015/10/PPI-Event-Report_FINAL-.pdf” responsive=”no”]Multi-morbidity, goal-oriented care, the community and equity[/su_document]

For further information or to get involved you can:

  • If you are interested in finding out more about the HEI Challenge contact Rachel Hawley, Project Manager – rhawley@lincoln.ac.uk 07711 532512
  • If you are interested in finding out more about the Patient and Public Involvement working group you can contact either Kristen Clements (K.M.Clements@lboro.ac.uk) or Rhian Last (R.Last@educationforhealth.org)

– We hope that you will help us continue the conversations:

Please follow us on Twitter: @qi_learning

Rachel Hawley

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CaHRU’s REST project features in Health Foundation’s stories of outstanding impact in primary care

REST-ABOUT1The Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment (REST) project featured in the Health Foundation’s recent newsletter, ‘Stories of outstanding impact in primary care‘. The REST project is an ongoing area of research within the Quality and Outcomes in Primary Healthcare group at CaHRU led by Prof Niro Siriwardena and involving other members of the team including Fiona Togher, Viet-Hai Phung, Dr Coral Sirdifield, Dr Jo Middlemass and Dr Zowie Davy. The project was initially funded by the Health Foundation under their Engaging with Quality in Primary Care scheme to improve primary care for people with insomnia. Subsequent work has been funded by the Research Investment Fund at the University of Lincoln, the EPSRC and the East Midlands Health Innovation and Educational Cluster.

restlogoThe research seeks to improve treatment for people suffering with sleep problems by promoting a range of treatment options beyond just sleeping tablets and has led to a series of peer-reviewed and highly cited publications in journals such as the British Journal of General Practice, Health Expectations, Sleep, Biomed Central Family Practice, and the British Medical Journal. Subsequent research has also been undertaken in collaboration with other institutions including Universities of Glasgow, Connecticut and Ghent and also Harvard and Oxford Universities.2. E-learning - HOME - Rollover

The project led to its own REST project website (http://restproject.org.uk/) in 2011 and a REST e-learning programme for primary care professionals on how to manage insomnia using non-drug therapy which has been accessed almost 12,000 times by 10,000 users in over 150 countries with over 5,000 users in the UK alone. REST was showcased as one of three impact case studies submitted from CaHRU to REF2014.

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CaHRU director keynote speaker at launch of PRIME Centre Wales

cardiff3Professor Niro Siriwardena was a keynote speaker at the launch of PRIME Centre Wales on 22 September at the Preseli Room, Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. He spoke on quality improvement in primary and prehospital care covering issues such as what is quality, how can improvement be brought about through cooperation rather than competition, and what can ambulance services and primary care learn from each other. PRIME Centre Wales is a multi-university collaboration co-funded by the Welsh government to research primary and prehospital unscheduled care led by Professors Adrian Edwards, Cardiff University, director of PRIME with co-directors Prof Joyce Kenkre (University of South Wales), Prof Richard Neal (University of Bangor), and Prof Helen Snooks (Swansea University).

niro2Other key speakers included the Welsh Health Minster, Prof Mark Drakeford who spoke on Welsh government policy on prudent health in primary and emergency care; Mr Simon Denegri, Chair of INVOLVE and National Director for Public Participation and Engagement in Research in his talk, entitled ‘Whose healthcare is it anyway?’ spoke about the importance and benefits of patient and public involvement in research; Dr Ruth Hussey, Chief Medical Officer for Wales in ‘Designing primary and emergency care services for a healthier, happier, fairer Wales’ focussed on equity; Prof Jean White, Chief Nursing Officer for Wales in ‘Developing our primary and emergency care workforce in Wales’ covered workforce challenges and priorities.

cardiff1There were posters showing the work of the centre and a range of workshops after lunch covering issues such as direction setting, lay involvement, the practice research incentive scheme and study design. The final keynote was given by Dr Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the BMJ, who covered important challenges for research including open data, overdiagnosis and medicalisation, and treatment burden which the journal were championing.

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Ethnicity and prehospital emergency care briefing paper published

EMAS - A&E 5_750A new briefing paper, ‘Ethnicity and prehospital emergency care provided by ambulance services‘, was published today by The Race Equality Foundation. The paper was co-authored by Viet-Hai Phung, Professor Niro Siriwardena, and Dr Zahid Asghar from CaHRU and Dr Karen Windle from the School of Health and Social Care.

EMAS - A&E 7_750It builds on work that CaHRU is undertaking on people from minority groups and their prehospital care. The briefing paper describes the inequalities in access to, as well as treatment and outcomes from, prehospital care for minority ethnic groups in the UK. It discusses how inequalities are driven by factors that include limited cultural awareness among service providers, as well as limited language proficiency and understanding of the healthcare system among these patients groups and how these inequalities manifest themselves in differences in treatment and outcomes.

EMAS - A&E 9_750The paper goes on to examine the implications arising from these inequalities for service delivery, especially since increasing ethnic diversity is raising issues of equality and equity higher up the legislative and policy agendas. It concludes by exploring potential solutions, which include: a more integrated approach to collecting patient ethnicity data; interventions that target at-risk groups in particular locations; and better cultural competency training for service providers.

Viet-Hai Phung