CLAHRC West Director Jenny Donovan on the response to our latest call

Director Jenny Donovan reflects on the response to our 2016 call for proposals with a focus on integration and optimal care, which closed on 7 March 2016.

We are delighted by the response to our recent call for implementation and research proposals – and I would like to thank all those who sent in submissions. We received 29 in total, which is curiously almost identical to the last call in 2014.

We are now in the midst of the hard work supporting the Research Advisory Panels that will let us know which ones most closely fit the call and are likely to achieve the most benefit for patients and public health.

On first view, the proposals look extremely interesting, with topics as diverse as respiratory services, domestic violence, frailty, chronic disease monitoring, autism assessment, joint working across boundaries, self-harm, data linkage and ‘apps’, diabetes care and pain rehabilitation – and many many more! Our Research Advisory Panels will have their work cut out to decide which of these projects we should prioritise.

Our aim is to work collaboratively with the applicants of the proposals that are taken forward. The applicants bring specialist knowledge and understanding of the issues and changes that need to happen to improve patient care and/or public health. From CLAHRC West we bring expertise in how to undertake analyses of existing evidence or collect and analyse new qualitative or quantitative data for the project.

Sometimes collaboration is quick and easy, but often projects take longer to set up or complete than initially expected. There can be delays for many reasons, but common hurdles include the need to obtain approval from ethics committees and R&D, other pressing commitments for front-line clinical staff meaning that research is often not the highest priority, and the surprising length of time it can take to extract data from routine systems or research papers, or to schedule interviews with busy people. While most of the projects from our first call were started within a few months of the feedback being issued and many of these are now reaching completion, one agreement about what to start work on was completed only last week!

Results from many of the early projects are now coming out – as publications in journals or reports for those who have been involved, or dissemination events. These, along with training and public and patient involvement events are added regularly to our website. In our future newsletters, we will have a focus on each of our themes and the findings they are producing – watch this space! In the meantime, if you would like to know what we are up to, please visit the website.