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Multiple births following in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment leads to serious health risks in the mother and offspring. It is caused by replacing multiple embryos within the uterus. Concerns about reduced success rates have deterred patients and practitioners from transplanting a single embryo. A programme of research led from the University of Aberdeen established that a policy of replacing one embryo at a time minimises the risk of twins without compromising livebirth rates. This work has received international media coverage, influenced clinical guidance and resulted in an increased uptake of single embryo transfer in the United Kingdom and beyond.
The claimed impact, as defined by REF guidance, is therefore on public policy and services; practitioners and professional services and health and welfare.
This case study describes significant health and wellbeing, and economic and social impacts deriving from a decade of MMU research into Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). Impacts include the creation of www.aacknowledge.org.uk, the world's first AAC evidence base, an online source of evidence and information on AAC made accessible for lay people, families, people who use AAC service commissioners and providers, as well as other information and resources. A case study database has also been created which enables practitioners to improve the efficacy of AAC treatments. The database maintains detailed information on approaches to treatment that practitioners can interrogate. MMU research has also informed and influenced a wider political engagement with AAC issues leading to improved awareness and understanding of AAC as well as an increase of £6.5M funding for UK provision and services.
The focus of the case is Social Network Analysis (SNA) which allows patterns of relations between actors (human and other entities) to be modelled and combined with actors' attributes. Edinburgh Napier University has applied these methods across a wide range of fields, achieving impacts both in the UK and internationally to make improvements in areas of health, commerce and policy. Methods have been applied to improve: the well-being of women and substance abusers in Bangladesh; the performance of supply chains; to demonstrate the effectiveness of prisoner management in reducing recidivism; and, to assess the effectiveness of health promotion initiatives.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimate 3.3 billion people are at risk of malaria, with 219 million cases and over half a million deaths annually. The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) has applied new methods of research synthesis to malaria, and the results of this work have directly influenced important global decisions on malaria policies, including the adoption of new antimalarial drugs. In this case study, we report on the influence of the LSTM on malaria control over the last 15 years by preparing rigorous, up-to-date, timely systematic reviews on malaria. This work has also contributed to substantive improvements in the methodological rigor and transparency of the WHO malaria policy group in evidence-based policy formulation and guideline development.
There is no `magic bullet' for helping intractable smokers to quit. Rather, the story of this research is one of multiple studies that have built the knowledge base incrementally, allowing Professor of Clinical Psychology Peter Hajek and his team at the Wolfson Institute of Preventative Medicine to produce a targeted, evidence-based model of a specialist treatment that has fed directly into the establishment of the NHS smoking cessation service (NHS-SSS) and national smoking cessation policy (including NICE guidance), and changed clinical practice. The NHS-SSS treats 800,000 smokers per year. The approach is influential globally and has now been used in treating several million smokers and preventing hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.
This case study highlights a body of research around health Research Priority Setting (RPS) that assists policy makers in effectively targeting research that has the greatest potential health benefit. Empirical research on RPS led to organizational changes, and new policies within the Cochrane Collaboration along with new training resources and new RPS exercises. A research gap on inequalities in the risk of oral cancer in the English South Asian population led to an evidence synthesis exercise being carried out by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the formulation of a new public health guideline.
This case study is based on two areas of research, both focused on young women's sexual health, conducted by Hoggart and Newton between 2009 and 2013. The first concerns abortion, and the second concerns long-acting reversible contraception (hereafter LARC). The research has had the following impacts: sexual health policy has been influenced; the delivery of sexual health service has changed; guidelines have been informed; practitioners have used the research findings; new clinical processes have been adopted; professional training has been influenced by the research; and industry has invested in research.
The research findings improved the comparative evidence base used by policy makers, providers and advocacy organisations when designing and delivering contracted out welfare to work programmes in the UK, including the development of service user safeguards implemented through the Department of Work and Pensions `Commissioning Strategy' and Work Programme (which will cater for over 3 million unemployed participants between 2011 and 2016). The research findings have also had a wider impact in informing policy makers, providers and user groups in other countries that have introduced or are introducing such contracting systems.
Rapid response reports, commissioned from the IOE's Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU) by the Departments for Education and Health specifically to inform policy-making, have helped to determine the financial and practical support for disadvantaged families and children in England for more than a decade. This important series of reports has achieved impact not only by producing robust findings that government departments can rely on but by building relationships of trust and mutual understanding between national policy-makers and researchers.
Oxford's research has helped reduce smoking prevalence and tobacco-related mortality worldwide. Our epidemiological studies have documented the varied ways in which smoking causes death in many countries, as well as the large benefits of smoking cessation, and have strongly influenced the WHO/Bloomberg 2008 MPOWER package, the key document guiding governmental tobacco policy worldwide. Oxford University researchers have also coordinated the systematic reviews that underpin effective evidence-based policies for encouraging smoking cessation both in the UK and worldwide, for example providing evidence supporting NICE guidance for smoking cessation.