Health & Care Engagement News and Updates

Health & Care Engagement Highlights (2023)

Please click on the 'expand' button to the right to see the full highlight report.

April 2023 Highlights

Out and About

The CRNCC Health and Care Engagement Team have been out and about this March engaging with our key stakeholders at two major conferences. Our first stop was the CARE England 'Thriving not just surviving' Conference in London. This is the first national social care conference the team has attended. Despite not being able to obtain a stand, we wanted to ensure we got NIHR messages out there by promoting the fantastic work of NIHR ENRICH through delegate bag handouts. Our next stop was the UKRD Summit in Leamington Spa, where there were presentations and panel discussions from our very own Lynis Lewis (CRN North Thames Mental Health Clinical Research Specialty Lead), Dr. Kate Jones (NIHR CRN Director of Research Delivery) and Prof. Ruth Endacott (NIHR Director of Nursing and Midwifery). Since the conference the Health and Care Engagement Team have strengthened our relationship with UKRD; engaging with Terry Jones (Director of R&I at Royal Liverpool and recently appointed as Director of Research at NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICS) who will be leading work around ICS engagement as part of the UKRD leadership team.

Lunch and Learn Program

The Health and Care Engagement Lunch Learn program forms part of the offering to the members of the Research Engagement Hub which can be found within the community space on NIHR Learn, as well as NIHR researchers and wider audiences from the central and local networks.

Embedding a Research Culture

The CRNCC Health and Care Engagement Team and CRNCC Communications Team are pleased to announce the publication of the new and improved  ‘embedding a research culture’ page of the NIHR website. Additional case studies from Acute NHS Trusts, Local Authorities and Primary Care are still under development and will be added to the page over the next few months.  

Updates From Our Stakeholders

NHS Confederation

The NHS Confederation’s Primary Care Network has launched a Research Design Group dedicated to increasing the amount of research done in primary care, increasing funding for research in primary care, as well as raising the status of primary care in this field. As part of this work to change the research landscape, they have created a directory to serve as a tool for primary care researchers looking for support and potential partners. 

NHSE Board Meeting 30th March 2023

The NHS England Board is committed to openness and transparency and conducts as much of its business as possible in a session that members of the public are welcome to attend and observe, subject to available space. You can view the papers and watch videos from NHSE Board Meetings. 

The last meeting on 30th March 2023 included a paper on NHS Innovation, Research and Life Sciences: mobilising the NHS behind research and innovation. In this paper NHSE detail the work undertaken in partnership with other members of the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC), to improve the research and innovation environment in the UK, supporting patients and clinicians to get access to proven technologies faster than ever before. The paper also updated on progress against the 5 priority areas and proposed further work to help align the work of the broader NHS innovation ecosystem, to best support the research, development, and implementation of innovative technologies. 

NHS Confederation have also produced a brief summary paper of the full meeting.

Independent Review of the UK’s Research, Development and Innovation Organisational Landscape

This Landscape Review was commissioned as part of the 2021 UK Innovation Strategy, to describe the diversity of UK RDI organisations, to identify strengths and weaknesses, and to make recommendations for improvement of the RDI landscape, with a primary focus on researchers and RDI funded by the public purse. The Review covers these areas and also comments on how the various RDI organisations interact with and support industry, commerce, and society more generally.

This Review identifies ten important attributes for a successful RDI landscape, including values that ensure the pursuit of research is the pursuit of truth. These attributes are: 

Please read the full report for more details.

January 2023 Highlights

Name Change

The CRNCC NHS Engagement Team have now changed their name to the CRNCC Health and Care Engagement Team to better reflect the wider remit of the CRN to deliver research in public health, social care and non-traditional settings.

Embedding a Research Culture and NIHR offers to ICSs/ICBs

The CRN Health and Care Engagement Team are leading on a refresh of the ‘embedding a research culture’ page of the NIHR website. This page update is at the request of Professor Lucy Chappell and will focus on a content refresh based on the following considerations:  


 

Work on developing an  HTML webpage for ICBs will now be replaced with the above project.  Wider complimentary work to include commissioners as an audience type for the NIHR website is currently being proposed by DHSC and if approved will provide another opportunity for the NIHR to promote its offer to ICBs. This work would potentially be informed by a roundtable with ICSs in February, plus the relevant March Strategy Board discussion.

Lunch and Learn Program

The Health and Care Engagement Lunch Learn program forms part of the offering to the members of the Research Engagement Collaborative which can be found within the community space on NIHR Learn, as well as NIHR researchers and wider audiences from the central and local networks.


Our objective for these sessions is to offer relaxed learning and sharing sessions for CRN (central and LCRN) staff on broad/current topics related to health and care research including developments within the  ICS landscape. 


We commenced our  lunch and learn sessions in June 2022 and to date have held three. We aim to hold a lunch and learn session every eight to ten weeks depending on speaker availability.  Audience participation has been around 140 attendees.  Previous themes for our lunch and learn  have been;  Taking research into the community. CRPs share their experiences, Integrated Care Systems.  What are they and why are they important for researchers and more recently, In at the Deep End: increasing research activity in areas experiencing high socioeconomic disadvantage, which was supported by Shona Haining, NHS R&D Forum.  


Our next lunch and learn session will be held on the 6th of March at 1pm, the theme being Developing a sustainable research culture and infrastructure for adult social care in the West Midlands. 

The CARE Group

The CARE Group continues to meet and be supported operationally by the Health and Care Engagement Team. Maria Palmer represents the NHS R&D Forum. Angel Yiangou (Academy of Medical Sciences) chaired the last meeting in December 2022. 


Engaging Social Care

Membership was discussed at this meeting and the CRN Health & Care Engagement Team highlighted the need for broader membership within the Social Care and Public Health sector. This suggestion was met with enthusiasm by the group. DHSC’s research priorities include prevention, early intervention and workforce and NHSE are trying to reframe the ICS guidance to ensure they are looking at a broader range of research. It was agreed that the CRN National Specialty Lead for Social Care should attend the next meeting and further suggestions for the Social Care provider and regulatory community would be shared with the group for consideration. 


Royal College of Physicians

The RCP updated on their newly published NIHR co-branded position statement. Support in developing the statement from additional stakeholders including UKRD, AMRC, UKRI and Royal College of Surgeons. The position statement features recommendations for H&C stakeholders around the theme of ‘making research everybody’s business’ and embedding research in care. Stakeholders include NHSE, ICSs, HEE, regulators, GMC, CQC etc. The RCP will also be looking at initiatives to encourage ECRs as well as more senior people to engage with research.


NHS England

NHSE updated on their REND initiative. They received 30 applications despite only 3 weeks notice, and were able to leverage an additional £900000. In total they funded 17 teams with the objective of running sustainable research with increased diversity. 


General Medical Council

The GMC are setting out a document on good medical practice. This will provide an update around what will be included around research and there will be some prominence of environmental issues, though not specifically climate change.  


Please visit the Engaging Our Stakeholders page for more updates from our key stakeholders!

Health & Care Engagement Highlight Reports (2022)