Latest activity and updates from the NIHR Applied Research Collaborative (NIHR ARC-GM) – June 2022

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) fund, enable and deliver world-leading health and social care research that improves people’s health and wellbeing, and promotes economic growth.

NIHR Applied Research Collaborations (ARCs) support applied health and care research that responds to, and meets, the needs of local populations and local health and care systems.

The NIHR ARC-GM is one of 15 ARCs across England, part of a £135 million investment by the NIHR to improve the health and care of patients and the public.

Find out more about our research on the NIHR ARC-GM website

Health Ageing

As part of the NIHR Healthy Ageing, Dementia and Frailty Priority Area, the Healthy Ageing Theme is hosting a series of shared learning events for ARCs and AHSNs. The first event took place in March and focused on ‘Meeting the needs of commissioners, policy makers and the AHSN roll-out programme’. For more information visit the website.

Mental Health

Prof Penny Bee and Dr Bernadka Dubicka have been awarded £2m from the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme (commencing in June 2022) for a study of ‘Behavioural activation for young people with depression.’

Evaluation

The Cities Changing Diabetes Project is now complete with one paper published and a report. We identified helpful insights and recommendations for partners across Greater Manchester about how they can work together to help reduce the impact of Type 2 diabetes.

Economic Sustainability

A new paper from the project: ‘Ethnic inequalities in COVID-19 vaccine uptake and comparison to seasonal influenza vaccine uptake in Greater Manchester, UK: A cohort study’ (Matt Sutton, Ruth Watkinson, Richard Williams, Caroline Sanders, Steph Gillibrand) which used the GM Care Record, is now published in PLOS Medicine. The inequalities in Covid-19 vaccine uptake between people from ethnic minority groups and White British people are far greater than for the pre-pandemic flu jab, a study by University of Manchester health researchers has found. Read the full story here.

Dr Luke Munford and colleagues from the other northern ARCs and The Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA), launched The Child of the North report in Parliament on March 9th. The team was joined by a wide range of interested parties, including politicians, academics, charities, young people and civil servants, who had the opportunity to speak to the authors of the report, which explores how to build a fairer future for children across the North of England, post COVID-19. Dr Luke Munford and colleagues have also written a blog for Policy@ Manchester about the report.

Public and Community Improvement and Engagement (PCIE)

The PCIE team is working with the rest of the GM NIHR infrastructure and the Voluntary, Charity and Social Enterprise Sector on a 6-month project to strengthen regional networks for public involvement, funded by NIHR (£10k). The aim of this work is to co-create systematic and embedded ways of working together and stimulate a programme of partnership approaches based on the needs of GM communities.

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