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Research by the School of Pharmacy has been used by the UK Government in their drive to improve the nation's public health. Our evidence base was used to inform the 2008 White Paper "Pharmacy in England: Building on Strengths — Delivering the Future". Healthy Living Pharmacies, recommended by the White Paper, have been piloted leading to improved engagement with local commissioners, further training for pharmacy staff, more cost-effective delivery of public health services, and an increase in public awareness and access to these services. In addition, the Government backed Pharmacy and Public Health Forum is utilising our research in its remit to develop, implement and evaluate public health practice in pharmacy.
This case study focuses on the research conducted by members of the UoA examining the services offered to service users and carers in secure settings. This includes forensic mental health services and prisons. It has had a significant impact on the development of professional practice in secure settings based on the views, experiences, and needs of service users and carers. It has established service user and carer engagement in research conducted in secure settings. It has also informed service and policy developments in the United Kingdom and internationally.
Research undertaken at the Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities(CIDD), has significantly impacted upon:
This case study describes the impact of research by Julie Marshall and Juliet Goldbart on international development; specifically on the lives of people with significant disabilities in Majority world countries. Research on delivering appropriate services to people with speech, language and communication disabilities has led to a Nuffield-funded project to mentor graduates from the first speech and language therapy qualifying programme in East Africa, providing much needed professional input in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania.
Related research on the need for appropriate services, and the form these services might take, has resulted in a model of service delivery in slum areas (bustees) of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), which has now been rolled out to 69 sites across the Greater Kolkata area. In addition to direct impact on rehabilitation services, impact is evident in the development of culturally appropriate training materials and training for health and education workers in East Africa, India and the U.K.
Sure Start, the flagship New Labour anti-poverty initiative launched in 1999, was an area-based early intervention targeting pockets of social and economic deprivation in England. The multi- disciplinary National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS), to which Professor Angela Anning was the central educational contributor, was the largest social science evaluation contract ever awarded in the UK. Findings were continually fed back to ministers and civil servants to inform policy and practice. Impacts (discussed below, section 4) include:
(1) systemic changes in integrated services for vulnerable families;
(2) rethinking the resourcing and funding of Children's Centres;
(3) revision of training and qualifications of early childhood staff;
(4) enhancing the role of family support and parenting projects.
Health inequalities are recognised as a critical UK policy issue with life expectancy gaps of up to 28 years between the least and most deprived areas. This case-study demonstrates how Durham University research has led to: (a) changing health service commissioning (with County Durham and Darlington Primary Care Trust [PCT]): (b) influencing NHS funding policy (by generating Parliamentary debate); as well as (c) contributing to the development of the new public health system in England and Wales (as part of the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post-2010 [Marmot Review]).
Alternatives to acute admission in mental health are crucial, not least because of the high cost of inpatient care. We have carried out a major research programme that includes the only randomised controlled evaluation of crisis resolution teams and the only major UK study of crisis houses, which are community-based, residential alternatives to hospital admission. This programme demonstrated the efficacy of community treatment and has significantly influenced decision making at a local and national policy level, including commissioning guidance and three sets of NICE guidelines. This has contributed to changes in the way acute services for severely mentally ill adults are configured in the NHS, and internationally.
While indexes exist that measure the maturity of the provision of eGovernment services from the government perspective (e.g. UN eGovernment Development Index, http://unpan3.un.org/egovkb/global_reports/12report.htm), there are no reliable standards that incorporate the citizen perspective into benchmarking of government effectiveness. Brunel research has included both government and citizen assessments and, through a more holistic approach to eGovernment evaluation, has helped Turkey and other governments to improve their e-government services.
EU funded CEES (Citizen-Oriented Evaluation of e-government Services) project delivered a new evaluation model, called COBRA (Cost, Opportunity, Benefit, Risk Analysis), for benchmarking e-government services from the citizens' perspective. CEES led to COBRA's adoption by Turksat, the Turkish central e-government service provider which has 12 million citizen users — leading to e-government service improvement and more favourable citizen attitudes. E-government service providers such as ictQATAR and OMSAR (Office of the Minister of State for Administrative Reform) have adopted the COBRA framework to evaluate and improve their e-government services in Qatar and Lebanon respectively. COBRA has also been used in UK and Estonia leading to similar outcomes.
This research outcome enabled the launch of a new project, called I-MEET, that is extending the COBRA framework to include governments' perspectives and is being applied to Qatar, Lebanon and the UK.
Evidence about the need for and provision of health visiting services generated through research undertaken at King's College London (KCL) has underpinned major changes in national policies for health visiting. Our findings about health visitors' practice, availability and distribution of services and effectiveness in terms of parenting/child outcomes, revealed both shortfalls in provision and opportunities for improvement and led to the development of a new caseload weighting tool and funding model for service planning. The accumulated evidence from this research helped convince the UK Government in 2010 to commit to 4,200 more health visitors by 2015 — a workforce expansion of nearly 50% — in a time of austerity and restraint elsewhere in the public sector.
Population research carried out by the University of Southampton in China, the world's most populous country, led to significant changes in the structure and delivery of a major United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) programme, thereby ensuring improved access to quality reproductive health and family planning services for more than 750 million Chinese men and women. Southampton's research provided the evidence of the impact that the UN programme was having which enabled the UNFPA to secure sustained financial support from international stakeholders to continue its work in China. The evidence from the research also convinced the Chinese government to roll out the programme nationwide and to re-orient family planning provision in China towards informed choice.