People in Northants urged to help shape health priorities

NIHR CLAHRC East Midlands, a regional health research organisation tasked with speeding up the adoption of science to the frontline of the NHS, has launched a consultation.

Formed in 2013, it has been given the opportunity to apply for another round of funding from 2019 and wants to gather people’s views on what conditions should be priorities.

The results of the Our Health, Our Way consultation will inform the focus of a multimillion pound application to the National Institute for Health Research, which is the research arm of the NHS, for a new set of studies.

Professor Kamlesh Khunti is the Director of NIHR CLAHRC East Midlands and is also Professor of Primary Care Diabetes and Vascular Medicine at the University of Leicester.

He said: “Health research provides us with the opportunity to advance care by allowing us to learn more about conditions and how best to prevent, treat or manage them.

“We have been working to improve the health of the East Midlands since 2013 and have countless successes to shout about.

“It is now time to apply for another round of funding from 2019, which will enable us to continue to our work.

“This is a chance to ask the good people of our region about what matters to them when it comes to healthcare.

“We are applying for an investment which has the opportunity to improve care across the East Midlands and we want to hear people’s ideas and thoughts to help us design new research studies.”

NIHR CLAHRC East Midlands has been helping to prevent type 2 diabetes by embedding a programme in the Loughborough area designed to help people prevent the condition, identifying 2,053 people as being ‘at risk’.

The project entitled Let’s Prevent has provided learning which has been used in the bidding process, refinement and implementation of the National Diabetes Prevention Programme in the East Midlands.

In April, the organisation also continued to support the rollout of a risk score for type 2 diabetes in South Asian languages with the release of a Punjabi version following Gujarati and Bangladeshi versions.

The organisation has been helping lead the Leicester Diabetes Model of Care evaluation, which will be shortly be presented to Clinical Commissioning Groups in Britain as well as health service providers in China and India.

Work carried out by the organisation also includes implementing and assessing an online tool that assists diagnosing children with ADHD, which initial evaluation shows that it can lower NHS costs by 22 per cent and also reduces diagnosis of the condition by average of 145 days.

In another study, an evaluation of an exercise programme to help prevent older people from falling was completed with the results likely to be adopted across the country with initial interest from NHS England amongst others.

Results from completed questionnaires will be collected and will be used to develop ideas for the funding application.

The questionnaire should take no more than 10 minutes to complete.

NIHR CLAHRC East Midlands is collaboration of the NHS, universities, patients and industry, which sets out to improve patient outcomes by conducting research of local relevance and international quality.

To take part, visit http://bit.ly/OurHealthOurWaySurvey.