HERG External Seminar: Will research active NHS organisations see improvements in the healthcare they deliver?

Please join us at the HERG external seminar taking place on 1^st March in Mary Seacole Building, Room 113, Brunel University London, 12.30 - 2.00 pm.

Presenter: Annette Boaz is a Professor of Health Care Research in the Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education at Kingston University and St George’s University of London. Her research focuses on the relationship between research evidence, policy and practice, implementation, improvement and patient engagement.

Title: Will research active NHS organisations see improvements in the healthcare they deliver?

Summary: In the UK the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has a budget of more than £1000 million each year, with more than £200 million allocated to research programmes and more than £600m spent on infrastructure (including Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRCs) and Networks). As a result, there are growing numbers of systems level interventions such as CLAHRCs, Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) and Academic Health Science Centres (AHSCs) designed to enhance the relationship between academic and health systems in the UK.  In addition to these initiatives that boost the level of research activity in healthcare organisations, there are individual level interventions to increase the capacity of healthcare staff to use research in their work and research programmes conducted with the aim of improving services for patients and their families. 

These different but complementary initiatives further raise the profile of the role of conducting research in enhancing healthcare performance.  For those of us interested in understanding the role of research in policy and practice these are interesting times.  This presentation will partly draw on work conducted jointly by Brunel and Kingston/St George’s and consider the international evidence base for claims that research engagement improves healthcare performance. It will also provide an overview of some of the current initiatives designed to promote improvement and present new research on the role of engagement of different actors (health care staff, patients and policy makers) as a mechanism for improving research use in the healthcare system.

A sandwich lunch will be available for all attending from 12.30pm and the presentation will start at 1.00pm.

The Mary Seacole building in Zone E on this campus map

To give us an indication of numbers, and for details about parking, please reply to Abbie Hill if you wish to attend.