e-Newsletter - Research Design Service North West · 2012-05-08 · Research Design Service for the North West e-Newsletter In this issue The new Research De-sign Service NW website

www.rds-nw.nihr.ac.ukResearch Design Service for the North West

e-NewsletterIn this issue

The new Research De-sign Service NW website

Patient and Public Involvement update

Contact details

The new Research Design Service NW websiteLast month we launched our brand new website. The new website features a clearer and easier to navigate design but keeps all the great content of the old website. It provides easier access to our advice service and it also allows us to provide you with new types of content. Watch this space for news on this content.

Separated into six sections: "Home", "Research design", "Funding", "Patient and Public Involvement", "RDS NW resources" and "About", it provides news, events, funding announcement and self-help resources on all aspects of health and social care research proposal development.

The home page provides an overview of the site. The "Research design", "Funding" and "Patient and Public Involvement" sections provide tailored information including events, links, self-help resources and news.

The "RDS NW resources" section provides events and a list of our latest self-help resources. You will also find here our "Events archive" where we provide slides and an

increasing number of event videos.

Make sure you check out our new "Link library" at www.rds-nw.nihr.ac.uk/news-training-events/link-library/.

Request advice from our advice service at www.rds-nw.nihr.ac.uk/request-advice/.

We would love to hear your feedback. Email [email protected].

Visit the website at www.rds-nw.nihr.ac.uk.

RDS NW website

Central Co-ordinating officeLancaster University01524 [email protected]

Cumbria and Lancashire local officeLancaster University01524 [email protected]

Greater Manchester local officeManchester University0161 306 [email protected]

Mersey and Cheshire local officeLiverpool University0151 795 [email protected]

Number 4 - May 2012

Adviser spotlight: medical statistics

Research for Patient Benefit success

North West People in Research Forum update

Ms. Alison Marriott and Dr. Catherine Cross (Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust) worked with the Manchester City Coun-cil and Age Concern Manchester to develop a proposal for the RfPB. NIHR RfPB funding was successfully obtained for their study entitled ‘A feasibility study of a guided self help group in-

tervention to improve the well being of older adults’. The study aims to assess whether it is feasible for non-mental health profes-sionals to be trained to effectively deliver a 6 week self help course. The course is based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and aims to improve wellbeing and life satisfaction for older adults not currently in contact with men-tal health services. Older adults generally un-der utilise mental health services. The project aims to increase accessibility to psychologi-cal interventions by embedding the ‘Be Well, Age Well’ course in existing day services. This focus on wellbeing is in line with recent government guidance which encourages taking a more “positive” approach to mental health. The study will inform future decisions to conduct a large scale project evaluating the efficacy of the ‘Be Well, Age Well’ course. Dr. Catherine Cross received advice from the NIHR Research Design Service for the North West on developing the proposal.

Research for Patient Benefit success

The NIHR Research De-sign Service NW advice service

Newsletters will now only be available online and will be known as "e-Newsletters"

Dr. Catherine Cross

Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) updateNew Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) strategic lead

Professor Ann Jacoby, who has been our PPI strategic lead since the start of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research Design Service for the North West (RDS NW) is sadly leaving us as she winds down in preparation for her retirement. We are sorry to see her go and we would like to thank her heartily for all her help and strategic vision, and we wish her all the best for the future. We have been fortunate in securing an excellent and experienced replacement. We would like to welcome Professor Soo Downe, BA, RM, MSc, PhD OBE, who joins Sara, Tracey and Paula as our new PPI strategic lead.

Soo spent 15 years working as a midwife in various clinical, research, and project development roles, between 1985 and 2000. In January 2001 she joined the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) in England, where she is now the Professor of Midwifery Studies. She was the founding Chair of the UK Royal College of Midwives Campaign for Normal Birth steering committee, and until recently, she was co-chair of the International Confederation of Midwives Research Standing Committee. She has been a member of a number of national and international midwifery and maternity services development committees, and of the UK Medical Research Council College of Experts. In 2011, she was awarded an OBE for services to midwifery. Her main research focus is the nature of, and cultures around, normal birth. Since she began her research career fifteen years ago, she has been involved in service user input into, and collaboration in, a range of research studies. With Dr Mick Mckeown, she set up the service user COMENSUS project at UCLAN, which covers all areas of health and social care. As well as running a number of locally and nationally funded projects, she is the principle investigator on an EU COST Action on childbirth contexts, cultures and consequences, which currently involves 19 countries within and outside of Europe.

North West People in Research Forum updateThe North West People in Research Forum events working group has been busy over the past couple of months. The working group ran a web survey and invited people from the Forum membership as well as other stakeholders to let them know what kinds of events they would like to see the Forum hold. Over one hundred and twenty-five people responded, with the majority saying that they would like to see the Forum hold a workshop-style event with a combined audience of patients, public, researchers, clinical staff and NHS professionals, and most saying that they would be happy to travel within the North West to attend the event.

The Forum is now planning an event for the after-noon of 31 May 2012 titled ‘The role and value of patient and public involvement and engagement in research.’ Simon Denegri, Chair of INVOLVE and newly appointed NIHR National Director for Public Participation and Engagement in Research, will be giving the keynote speech. The rest of the afternoon will be split into two consecutive workshops – the first focused on patient and public involvement, and the second public engagement. The event is currently full, but to be included in the reserves list please contact the Forum Events Administrator Bar-bara Dawkins at [email protected].

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The bursary scheme

Our bursary scheme, which supports researchers with the costs of involving patients and the public in the early stages of a research bid, has been in operation for a year now and has proved very popular. We have awarded 35 bursaries since it started and are currently in the process of working with applicants to evaluate its processes and overall value. We will report our findings in the next newsletter. If you think you would like to apply for a PPI bursary, contact the coordinating office at [email protected] for details of how to apply. Please note that you need to be in receipt of advice from RDS NW concerning your project in order to be eligible.

Development events

We have recently had several events where PPI has featured. Our regular RfPB proposal development series was most recently held in the North of the region. Sara spoke about ‘Ensuring Patient and Public Involvement in your proposal and project’. In addition, this series is now supported by the involvement of experienced lay representatives. Two members of a local research partner forum, Rita Hewitt and Daisy Lussier, kindly agreed to attend and to discuss the specific plans for PPI in the researchers’ bids. This was all very much appreciated by attendees and it was a pleasure for us to see the well designed PPI in the draft proposals by the final session.

In addition we have plans to provide further targeted PPI advice for researchers who are unable to attend the RfPB proposal development series. This support will focus on the issues that clients identify as important in improving their PPI during bid development, and will aim to help them capture this within their applications. The format will be flexible and we are asking that researchers who may be interested in this kind of help contact the coordinating office at [email protected] to register an interest.

The Forum training working group has been building a North West Training Route Map in order to signpost people to training or support that already exists in the region, and to identify current gaps in provision. The Route Map is with the Forum web designer, who is trying to develop a user friendly web version that people will be able to access via the Forum website. When this goes ‘live’ the working group will be ask-ing stakeholders to view the Route Map and ensure that all relevant training and support available within the region has been captured.

The Training Working Group also recently published a document outlining their mission, vision and objec-tives. The Group’s vision statement is: ‘To promote and support learning and development opportuni-ties for public involvement in research in the North West.’ For further details of their short (0-12 months) and medium (12-24 months) objectives, go towww.northwestpeopleinresearchforum.org/the-fo-rum-training-working-group-publishes-their-mission-vision-and-objectives/.

To join the Forum membership please visit their web-site and register on-line www.northwestpeoplein-researchforum.org/ or contact the Forum Facilitator Marisha Palm on [email protected]

Medical statistics or the more general term biostatistics is the application of statistics to medicine and the health services. It is a core component of evidence based medicine, but statistics can often be open to interpretation or debate. For example, the recently published report on the increased risk of death for patients taking hypnotic drugs for sleep problems. One insurmountable problem is that everybody is different and how a drug or treatment works on one individual may be totally different from how it works on another. Consequently there is a need to ensure that studies are planned with as much statistical rigour as possible.

Although most people associate statistics with the analysis of data already collected the statistician needs to be involved in the planning and execution of the study from the beginning of the design process. Firstly there is a need to ensure that the study design is appropriate to collect the required data to answer the study hypothesis. Then there is a need to ensure that the sample size of the study is sufficient to provide meaningful results or detect what is thought to be a clinically significant difference. Finally there is a need to ensure that the data is collected without bias and is a good representative sample of the population being studied.

For the Mersey and Cheshire arm of the NIHR Research Design Service for the North West, the front line advisor is Steven Lane. Steven’s main research interest is in pharmacokinetics, which can be simply explained as what the body does to a drug, and the application of this information to develop algorithms to estimate individual dose requirements. As was said earlier one of the major problems in medicine is that individuals can respond differently to drugs or treatments. These different responses can be caused by demographic factors, e.g. body-weight, age or gender, genetic factors, clinical factors, e.g. working of the kidneys or liver, co-morbidity or co-medication or lifestyle factors, such as diet or alcohol intake. The overall aim of the research is to combine as many of these factors into pharmacokinetic models of specific drugs, e.g. warfarin and Imatinhib, to estimate patient

Adviser spotlight: medical statistics

Dr. Steven Lane

For advice on statistics during your proposal development please contact [email protected]

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specific pharmacokinetic parameter values for such things as absorption of the drug into plasma and the clearance of the drug from the plasma. These values along with other information are then incorporated into stochastic algorithms, which are used to estimate the dose requirement of each specific patient.

Steven is also involved in a number of other projects including the development of a global mental health screening tool. This is a computerised mental assessment tool that can be used by nurses in primary care to assess patients with suspected mental health problems; The development of a screening tool to classify the severity of bronchitis in young children; The use of two day versus seven day antibiotic treatment of patients in intensive care with suspected sepsis and the use of haemofiltration during cardiopulmonary bypass surgery.

The NIHR Research Design Service NW advice serviceWe provide advice on all aspect of research design helping you to develop your research proposal for sub-mission to open competition peer reviewed funding competitions in health and social care.

Here's what some of our clients have to say:

Very helpful service, saved me a huge amount of time.

I have received invaluable assistance at all stages and as well as this was supported in suc-cessfully obtaining a small RDS NW bursary of £300 to pump prime Public Involvement in my research.

Great and effective service - would definitely use again.

An efficient and excellent service, very useful and comprehensive feedback.

To access or find out more information about our advice service, please visit our website, www.rds-nw.nihr.ac.uk.

For advice on any aspect of your research proposal please contact the RDS NW at [email protected]. Further contact details are available on our website at www.rds-nw.nihr.ac.uk.

RfPB funding increaseThe NIHR Research for Patient Benefit programme has announced that the funding available through the programme is increasing from up to £250,000 to up to £350,000 per project.

This change will come into effect from Competition 19, which will launch in July 2012.

RfPB funds regionally-derived applied research projects in health services and social care. The programme aims to realise, through research evidence, the potential for improving, expanding and strengthening the way that healthcare is delivered for patients, the public and the NHS.

Competition 18 is currently open and closes on Friday 25 May 2012. Researchers applying through Competition 18 will not be eligible for this increased funding – the current funding limit of up to £250,000 applies for this competition.

For further information and to apply to RfPB - visit the RfPB website here.

Version 1.0 - 2012-04-27, © Lancaster University

Research Design Service for the North West

NIHR funding deadlines

In this issue

The new Research De-sign Service NW website

NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR)

Commissioned stage 1 submission 17th May 2012Surgery themed call 25th May 2012Researcher-led stage 1 submission 19th July 2012

NIHR Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB)

Competition 18 and surgery themed call 25th May 2012

Invention for Innovation (i4i)

Surgery themed call 25th May 20124th call stage 1 submission 13th June 2012Challenge awards stage 2 submission 20th July 20124th call stage 2 submission 31st Aug 2012

Public Health Research (PHR)

Commissioned stage 1 submission 17th Jul 2012Researcher-led stage 1 submission 30th Jul 2012

http://www.netscc.ac.uk/funding/funding_timetable.xml http://nihrccfcalls.tumblr.com/rss

EventsAnnual NHS R&D Management Forum

Hilton Birmingham Metropole 28th & 29th May 2012

The role and value of patient and public involvement and engagement in research

Manchester 31st May 2012

8th Mixed Methods International Conference

Leeds 18th to 21st June 2012

Health Services Research Network Symposium and NHS Confederation Annual Conference

Manchester 19th & 20th June 2012

The Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) research pro-gramme seminar - organised by the RDS NW

Manchester 21st June 2012

For further events in the North West and Nationally please visit the NIHR RDS NW website at:www.rds-nw.nihr.ac.uk.

Please always check the event or funder website for the latest information and dates.

Useful links and resources

Payment for involvement: Welfare benefit barriershttp://www.invo.org.uk/payment-for-involvement/

CHAIN - Contact, Help, Advice and Information Networkhttp://chain.ulcc.ac.uk/chain/

NHS Evidencehttp://www.evidence.nhs.uk/default.aspx

Registered Clinical Trials Unitshttp://www.ukcrc-ctu.org.uk/

The Cochrane Library - The reliable source of evidence in health carehttp://www.cochrane.org/

RDFunding: Seeking Fundinghttp://rdfunding.org.uk/Background/Funding.asp

Patient and Public Involvement How-to guidehttp://www.rds-nw.nihr.ac.uk/public-involvement/how-to-guide/