Improving our health by translating research evidence into local NHS practice
Events
Innovation: the new revolution: 27th November 2009
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Our first conference, held on 27th November celebrated the first year
achievements of the Birmingham and Black Country CLAHRC and attracted
dozens of delegates from across the Midlands and beyond. The event was
themed ‘Innovation: the new revolution’ and offered an afternoon of
networking and interaction for representatives from partner Trusts, the
University of Birmingham and other healthcare and research
professionals. Theme leaders outlined the progress made by some of the
nine applied health research or implementation projects within the
collaboration while guest speakers shared their visions for the
programme and invited debate from the audience.
Dr Rashmi Shukla, Regional Director of Public Health, NHS West Midlands,
emphasised how the CLAHRC BBC supported regional health strategies
through its diverse research programmes. “The CLAHRC themes link closely
to two strategies in particular,” she said, referring to Investing for
Health and QIPPP – Quality, Innovation, Productivity, Prevention and
Partnerships. “The programme supports these health strategies by
building the evidence base of ‘the what’ and ‘the how’,” she explained.
“They support innovation at a local and regional level.”
The conference, staged at the Botanical Gardens in Edgbaston,
Birmingham, was opened by Prof Richard Lilford, CLAHRC BBC Director. He
introduced Prof Sue Mawson, Director of the South Yorkshire CLAHRC who
gave a brief welcome. The first speaker was Prof Huw Davies, Director,
Knowledge Mobilisation and Capacity Building, NIHR SDO Programme, whose
talk was entitled ‘Why using research is not so easy – and how CLAHRCs
can help’. “We need to know what works but we also need to know about
problems, why we need to do research, how to put it into practice and
who to involve,” he said. “This is where using shared spaces and new
partnerships, such as the CLAHRC, can play a role. “The CLAHRCs are
experimenting and learning and with the help of this kind of dialogue we
can move from knowledge transfer to knowledge interaction. We must move
from knowing to doing.”
Prof Lilford then outlined the CLAHRC’s role in helping the NHS to be a
more effective partner in the translation of health research into
routine practice. He outlined the partners, themes and policy relevance
before concluding: “We are determined that we are going to succeed
locally by improving services.”
Dr Jonathan Shapiro’s talk, entitled ‘If culture eats strategy for
breakfast, what does structure do to function?’ brought delegates up to
date with progress on the Health Service Redesign theme. He then
explored the role of the CLAHRCs and their measure of success: “The
national project is asking how academia and the NHS can work better
together. “It’s not really about individual projects, which are merely
experiments to test this……the success or failure of the CLAHRC will be
measured by collaboration rather than how treatment for a clinical
condition improves.”
Following a workshop run by the SDO Network, Dr Tom Marshall spoke about
the Cardiovascular Prevention research project (Theme 6) which has
evaluated primary care data from three large GP practices in the West
Midlands. Prof Richard McManus then gave an update and findings from
Theme 7: Stroke Care which aims to ‘optimise the management of people
with Transient Ischaemic Attack (TIA) and stroke in Birmingham through
identification and breaking down of current barriers to timely and
effective treatment’.
Prof
Richard Lilford, Director of CLAHRC BBC
Evaluating service change…...real world experience
