Making a difference
We provide evidence and expertise to national organisations including the National Institute for Health & Care Excellence (NICE), Public Health England (PHE), Royal College of General Practitioners, Department of Work and Pensions, collaborate closely with local and regional partners to support the uptake of evidence into clinical practice, and work with patients and public bodies to support the translation of evidence into ‘tools’ for everyday use.
Our data intelligence and epidemiology feeds into developing interventions with our stakeholders, into trials of the interventions in practice and proactive dissemination and implementation with our partners (public and healthcare).
We work closely with patients and the public and other stakeholders to identify and prioritise research questions, and when designing and carrying out our research.
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Stakeholder involvement, strong local and regional partnerships with academic and non-academic organisations, and established relationships with national professional bodies and policymakers play an important role across all stages of our translational research to ensure our work is relevant to their needs. We are members of the West Midlands Academic Research Collaboration (ARC) and have good working relationships with the West Midlands Academic Health Science Network (AHSN). Our staff hold academic consultant contracts with Public Health England, and work with the Department for Work & Pensions, Versus Arthritis, and Age UK on projects and initiatives. Key local partners include Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust, North Staffordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), Stoke-on-Trent CCG, Shropshire CCG, Staffordshire County Council, and Stoke-on-Trent City Council. |
We work with our dedicated Impact Accelerator Unit (IAU), partners, and collaborators to generate high impact for our research findings, ensuring knowledge mobilisation and implementation is considered in the design of research projects, and that patient and public involvement and engagement is embedded across all research stages. Our IAU is part of the West Midlands Knowledge Mobilisation Collaboration, a partnership between knowledge mobilization colleagues at Keele University, Birmingham City University, Warwick University and the West Midlands Applied Research Collaboration.
Raising public awareness and understanding
| Our research underpins better information that is made accessible to patients, the public and practitioners to support self-management. The practical examples cited below are provided to demonstrate this approach, please see the Impact Accelerator Unit website for further examples. Gout affects 1 in 40 adults in the UK. It causes excruciating attacks of joint pain, long-term joint damage and impaired health-related quality of life. Our qualitative research explored people’s experiences of having gout and identified the issues relating to causes, diagnosis, and treatment that are important to them. Using these findings we worked with patients and members of the public to develop educational materials about gout to support patients, carers and healthcare professionals. This includes our module for healthtalk.org which provides online patient-facing educational materials for gout to support patients, carers and healthcare professionals (to date this resource has been accessed over 400,000 times since going live and the gout videos are viewed 4,000 times per month. Common misconceptions of osteoarthritis are that it is ‘just your age’, that it involves inevitable wearing out of joints and progressive disability, and that nothing can be done except to replace the affected joint. Our Osteoarthritis Guidebook co-produced with patients and members of the public, combines scientific understanding with lived experiences of osteoarthritis. The guidebook was adopted nationally as a resource for the public by Versus Arthritis and recommended as part of the suite of tools by Red Whale (a national primary care education provider) for use during Covid system transformation (remote working and supporting patients), in addition to being translated/adapted for use in the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal and Norway. Visit JIGSAW-E for more information on supported self-management for joint pain. Self-harm can affect anyone, regardless of age, but most of the research on self-harm is about younger people. A leaflet was created to provide information to people of all ages affected by self-harm. This was developed by I. Troya (PhD student at Keele University) in collaboration with the study’s Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Group. |
