Award Title: NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Wessex
Funder: Department of Health and Social Care

Abstract: Mission: To improve health and well-being of people of Wessex across the life course targeting quality, safety, effectiveness and efficiency of health and care services by undertaking and supporting implementation of leading-edge applied health research for patient, community and population benefit.     Focus: The NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) Wessex will bring together public and community, expert researchers from a wide range of disciplines, clinical leaders of health and care systems and other stakeholders.  It will work across the Wessex health and care system to ensure local reach and national impact. It will provide fresh thinking, evidence and methods to enable health and care systems to become more effective at promoting health, improving quality of life and enhancing efficiency. Our work will stimulate and impact on system improvements and health and care reforms.     ARC Wessex strategy:  We will build on our strengths in applied health and implementation research and patient engagement, and focus on strategic priorities of the Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) for Wessex providing a detailed case for change (Figure1).     Our 3 themes together with a cross cutting theme (entitled health systems & workforce), (Figure 2), concentrate on components of care management and public health and address critical gaps in: health and well-being; care and quality; and finance and efficiency. Our research will meet the demands of, and reflect the diversity of, our local communities.     Ageing & dementia: supporting independent living for people with complex health needs will test strategies to identify those with high treatment burden and promote self-management through technology and increased service users  choice and control. It will introduce and evaluate organisational and workforce interventions to increase the capacity of teams to deliver safe and effective care and improve management of multi-morbidity.     Healthy communities: improving public health across the lifecourse will implement and evaluate strategies to address childhood obesity, improve early detection and modification of diseases amenable to prevention, and identify people facing fuel poverty or alcohol misuse.     Long-term conditions: integrating person-centred approaches to optimise healthy living will identify, implement and evaluate strategies and technology for self-directed support to support active living by establishing and embedding interventions that mobilise patient capacity and engage patients and communities to minimise crises.     Health systems & workforce: supporting health and social care by improving service delivery will model, implement and evaluate methods to achieve pro-active management of demand for health and social care, reducing service fragmentation, and develop a framework for organisations to evaluate workforce implications of introducing healthcare innovations.     Alignment of ARC aims with Academic Health Science Network (AHSN): Our strategy and objectives are closely aligned with the Wessex AHSN, seeking to speed innovation adoption across the region s health system to create a healthier population and a thriving economy.  Our research themes connect with the AHSN priority areas of dementia, nutrition, medicines optimisation, reducing harm from alcohol, workforce and healthy ageing.     Strategy for translating applied health research for patient benefit: The ARC's implementation strategy (Figure 3) involves building knowledge, skills and capabilities to ensure  adoption-ready  organisations. We aim to enhance capacity of workforce and health and care organisations to apply and embed evidence.  This will be achieved by projects developing resources to support implementation and plans to enact these.  Each theme will have clinical academics, public contributors and programme leads drawn from relevant STPs and CCGs.     ARC Wessex has ambitious objectives to:     Create a distributed model for conduct and translation of applied health research that links knowledge generators with knowledge adopters across Wessex and nationally.  Generate, synthesise and implement evidence on care, organisational and technology innovations to enable efficient and sustainable services.  Develop and evaluate behavioural, social and technological means to aid people to stay healthier for longer and take control of their own health and care.  Develop meaningful, timely solutions to improvement challenges through application of operational research.  Build local NHS, public health, local authority and related inter-sectoral capacity to implement evidence into practice and capacity to evaluate service change.      We will deliver:  Short-term (1-2 years)    One Wessex ARC community, linked nationally: vibrant and connected interdisciplinary, multi-professional applied health research community responsive to patient and public voice.  Early evidence: on workability and outcomes of introducing novel approaches to achieve health promotion, reduce service fragmentation and promote effective supported self-management.   Medium term (3-4 years)    Evidence of real world effectiveness: of tools to support pro-active demand management, digital applications to sustain healthy living and community engagement and interventions to promote voice, choice and control.  Building workforce capacity: amongst the formal and informal health and care workforce and applied health research community to deliver sustainable person-centred care pathways and address complexities of healthcare delivery and diversity of patient experiences.   Long-term (5+ years)    A learning and collaborative system: where research outputs reach the right places, are used and make an impact on health and wealth agenda.  Embedded person-centred approaches to health and care delivery: that reduce service fragmentation and treatment burden and build engagement with people with complex needs through better service (re)design and workforce management.      How success of proposed ARC will be evaluated  Alongside theme-specific metrics performance indicators will be developed, facilitating tracking of ARC progress against objectives including measures of:    growth in capacity to conduct research that addresses local priorities, with national reach;  production of practice changing research leading to better outcomes for patients and public and improved ways of working for local health and care organisations and workforce;  growth in infrastructure to facilitate an “adoption” ready health system;  evidence of adoption of ARC innovations to achieve health care improvement;  community and public involvement and impact on research – from prioritisation, through conception, conduct, dissemination and implementation.      Wessex ARC values  In order to deliver our ambitious programme, our ARC will apply a set of values that resonate with our collaborating organisations: forward thinking health and social care for patient and public benefit, clinical academic excellence, respect for colleagues across the health and care system, openness and flexibility, and working collaboratively with a clear commitment to delivery.

Lay Abstract: Home to successful research organisations, Wessex is one of the busiest health research areas in England. ARC Wessex will work closely with these teams and build on success of CLAHRC Wessex. We will provide fresh-thinking, new knowledge and methods. This will promote health, raise quality of life and improve our ability to deliver health and social care services.     We have three research themes: 1) Healthy Communities; 2) Ageing and Dementia; and 3) Long-term Conditions.     Our research focuses on:    Identifying groups of people at risk of preventable illness and those whose treatment plans take a lot of time and energy.  Helping people stay healthy, stay well and remain independent by creating and sharing plans to support healthy living and self-management of conditions.  Improving patient voice, choice and control over own health.  Reducing the effort or  burden  of treatment faced by people living with complex health needs or long-term conditions.      A Health Systems and Workforce theme runs across the three themes and focuses on:    Providing methods to manage demand on health and social care and make services more joined-up.  Making best use of NHS and social care staff to improve quality and effectiveness of services.      Our goals are to:    Work across research teams and service providers in Wessex and England to build research skills, produce new knowledge and use this to improve practice.  Champion new approaches to person-centred care based on evidence. These will result in better health and care services which minimise patient effort, reduce waste and expense and can last.  Support people to stay healthier for longer and take control of their own health and care.  Develop meaningful answers to health and care challenges by using scientific methods to study difficult organisational problems.  Strengthen Wessex s ability and skills to apply knowledge into practice in order to get benefit of our work.      We will deliver:  In 1-2 years:    A united health research community which listens and responds to local public and community voice.  Early signs of usefulness and results of introducing our approaches.   In 3-4 years:    Proof of how our approaches will work in the real world.  A bigger community of staff better able to carry out and make use of research so we can improve healthcare.   In 5+ years:    New knowledge used to improve health of local population.  Improved design of services and better use of staff to provide person-centred care.      Our work will result in people who:    Stay healthier for longer.  Get better sooner.  Have confidence to manage their long-term illnesses.  Are treated as a person, not a collection of illnesses all treated individually.  Receive regular, safe care delivered by staff with the right attitude and skills.  Find their treatment requires less effort and can access joined-up services.      We will work closely with everyone affected by our research, including patient and public communities. Our markers of success will be:    More people doing research, with better skills.  Better health results.  Better ways of working.  Seeing our findings used in real-life.  Better public and community involvement with greater effect.

Research Activity Codes: 5.9 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (TREATMENT DEVELOPMENT);6.9 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (TREATMENT EVALUATION);7.4 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (DISEASE MANAGEMENT)
Health Categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;NEUROLOGICAL