Family carer experiences of hospice care at home: Qualitative findings from a mixed methods realist evaluation.

Background: Hospice-at-home aims to enable patients approaching end-of-life to die at home and support their carers. A wide range of different service models exists but synthesised evidence on how best to support family carers to provide sustainable end-of-life care at home is limited.

Aim: To explore what works best to promote family carers' experiences of hospice-at-home.

Medicine burden experiences of people living with HIV and association with stigma.

The medicine burden of people living with HIV (PLWH) is unknown. Between 2018 and 2020, participants completed a survey comprising outcome measures for medicine burden (LMQ-3) and stigma experiences (SSCI-8). Participants were HIV+ adults (≥18 years), using antiretrovirals (ARV) with or without non-ARV medicines, recruited via two outpatient clinics in southeast England and online via HIV charities across the UK.

What happens after an NHS Health Check? A survey and realist review.

Background: The National Health Service Health Check in England aims to provide adults aged 40 to 74 with an assessment of their risk of developing cardiovascular disease and to offer advice to help manage and reduce this risk. The programme is commissioned by local authorities and delivered by a range of providers in different settings, although primarily in general practices. This project focused on variation in the advice, onward referrals and prescriptions offered to attendees following their health check.

The effect of general practice team composition and climate on staff and patient experiences: a systematic review.

Background: Recent policy initiatives seeking to address the workforce crisis in general practice have promoted greater multidisciplinarity. Evidence is lacking on how changes in staffing and the relational climate in practice teams affect the experiences of staff and patients.

Aim: To synthesise evidence on how the composition of the practice workforce and team climate affect staff job satisfaction and burnout, and the processes and quality of care for patients.

COVID-19 as an Accelerator of the Implementation of Emergency Medical Teams Initiative in the AFRO Region.

Objective: This study describes the progress that the World Health Organization (WHO) African (AFRO) region has made in establishing National Emergency Medical Teams (N-EMTs), the coordination mechanisms of the EMTs, and the regional training centers.

Methods: It used a retrospective descriptive analysis of the formulation and implementation of the EMTs Initiative from an insider perspective. The analysis is based on the review of available documents such as EMTs mission reports, assessments, surveys, EMT monthly bulletins, and meeting minutes in addition to key informant interviews ( = 5) with the EMT teams' members to validate the findings and share field experiences.

The theoretical and practical difficulties of evaluating a community-based 'whole systems' obesity prevention intervention: a research team's critical reflection.

Aims: This article critically discusses the purpose, pragmatics and politics of conducting commissioned evaluations on behalf of public sector organisations by drawing on the experience of evaluating a community-based 'whole systems' obesity prevention intervention for an English local council.

Methods: The study presented in this article incorporated two approaches: an evaluability assessment that interrogated the theoretical and practical difficulties of evaluating the intervention in a non-political way, and a retrospective analysis using Soft Systems Methodology that interrogated the more political difficulties of conducting such an evaluation in the 'real world'. The information and insights that enabled these reflections came from over 3 years of working closely with the programme team, attending and participating in stakeholder events and meetings, presenting to the Council's Scrutiny Committee meetings, four interviews with the programme manager, and multiple face-to-face group meetings, email exchanges and telephone conversations.

Understanding how to build a social licence for using novel linked datasets for planning and research in Kent, Surrey and Sussex: results of deliberative focus groups.

Introduction: Digital programmes in the newly created NHS integrated care boards (ICBs) in the United Kingdom mean that curation and linkage of anonymised patient data is underway in many areas for the first time. In Kent, Surrey and Sussex (KSS), in Southeast England, public health teams want to use these datasets to answer strategic population health questions, but public expectations around use of patient data are unknown.

Objectives: We aimed to engage with citizens of KSS to gather their views and expectations of data linkage and re-use, through deliberative discussions.

Lessons learned from using linked administrative data to evaluate the Family Nurse Partnership in England and Scotland.

Introduction: "Big data" - including linked administrative data - can be exploited to evaluate interventions for maternal and child health, providing time- and cost-effective alternatives to randomised controlled trials. However, using these data to evaluate population-level interventions can be challenging.

Objectives: We aimed to inform future evaluations of complex interventions by describing sources of bias, lessons learned, and suggestions for improvements, based on two observational studies using linked administrative data from health, education and social care sectors to evaluate the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) in England and Scotland.

Measuring quality of life in care homes when self-report is challenging: the construct validity, structural characteristics and internal consistency of the mixed-methods adult social care outcomes toolkit.

Introduction: The adult social care outcomes toolkit (ASCOT) measures social care-related quality of life (SCRQoL) using self-completion questionnaires and interviews. Many care home residents find such methods inaccessible, leading to a reliance on proxy-reporting. This study aimed to establish the psychometric properties of the mixed-methods toolkit [ASCOT-Care Homes, 4 outcome (CH4)] for measuring SCRQoL when residents cannot self-report.

Effects of Telephone Consultation on Safety, Service Use, Patient Satisfaction, and Workload: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Trials.

Telephone consultation (TC) is widely used for its easy access and convenience. This review aimed to assess the effects of TC including triage on safety, service use, patient satisfaction, and health professionals' workload to inform directions for future health service practice. CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, ProQuest Dissertation & Theses (Health & Medicine), ClinincalTrials.

Is It Time to Explore the Health Policy Process Within Governance and Health Systems Frameworks? Comment on "Modelling the Health Policy Process: One Size Fits All or Horses for Courses?".

There is clearly a need to improve the use of more robust policy theory on health policy analysis. Powell and Mannion in an editorial on the relationship between health policy analysis and the wider field of public policy theory note, as others have done before, the limited application of policy theory in health policy analysis. However, they also highlight that within the health policy analysis arena new models have emerged which have wider use within policy analysis such as the health policy triangle.

Young People's Attitudes, Perceptions and Experiences of Social Distancing and Self-Isolation During the Second Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Social distancing and self-isolation were key parts of the UK's strategy for reducing the spread of COVID-19. This study explored young people's attitudes, perceptions and experiences of social distancing and social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative individual, family and paired-friendship interviews were conducted.

Predicting lifespan-extending chemical compounds for with machine learning and biologically interpretable features.

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the development of pharmacological interventions targeting ageing, as well as in the use of machine learning for analysing ageing-related data. In this work, we use machine learning methods to analyse data from DrugAge, a database of chemical compounds (including drugs) modulating lifespan in model organisms. To this end, we created four types of datasets for predicting whether or not a compound extends the lifespan of (the most frequent model organism in DrugAge), using four different types of predictive biological features, based on: compound-protein interactions, interactions between compounds and proteins encoded by ageing-related genes, and two types of terms annotated for proteins targeted by the compounds, namely Gene Ontology (GO) terms and physiology terms from the WormBase's Phenotype Ontology.

The experiences and perceptions of health-care professionals regarding assistive technology training: A systematic review.

Worldwide, there is an increasing demand for assistive technologies (ATs) that can support people to live independently for longer. Health-care professionals (HCPs) often recommend AT devices, however there exists a lack of availability of devices and appropriate training in the field. This systematic review aimed to synthesize the available evidence into the experiences and training needs of HCPs in relation to AT.

Exploring food insecurity and multimorbidity in Indian socially disadvantaged people: cross-sectional findings from LASI, 2017-18.

Objectives: The present study aimed to examine the association of multimorbidity status with food insecurity among disadvantaged groups such as Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Other Backward Class (OBCs) in India.

Method: The data for this study was derived from the first wave of the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI),2017-18, focusing on 46,953 individuals aged 45 years and over who belong to SCs, STs, and OBCs groups. Food insecurity was measured based on the set of five questions developed by the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance Program (FANTA).

A step towards reinvigorating the COVID-19 response: an intra-action review of the WHO Regional Office for Africa Incident Management Support Team.

The WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) COVID-19 Incident Management Support Team (IMST) was first established on 21 January 2020 to coordinate the response to the pandemic in line with the Emergency Response Framework and has undergone three modifications based on intra-action reviews (IAR). An IAR of the WHO AFRO COVID-19 IMST was conducted to document best practices, challenges, lessons learnt and areas for improvement from the start of 2021 to the end of the third wave in November 2021. In addition, it was designed to contribute to improving the response to COVID-19 in the Region.

Feasibility, validity and reliability of the ASCOT-Proxy and ASCOT-Carer among unpaid carers of people living with dementia in England.

Background: People with dementia living at home represent a growing group of social care services users in England. Many are unable to complete questionnaires due to cognitive impairment. The ASCOT-Proxy is an adapted version of an established measure, ASCOT, which was developed as a way of collecting social care-related quality of life (SCRQoL) data from this group of service users, either alone or alongside the ASCOT-Carer, a measure of SCRQoL for unpaid carers.

A multicomponent psychosocial intervention to reduce substance use by adolescents involved in the criminal justice system: the RISKIT-CJS RCT.

Background: Substance use and offending are related in the context of other disinhibitory behaviours. Adolescents involved in the criminal justice system constitute a particularly vulnerable group, with a propensity to engage in risky behaviour that has long-term impact on their future health and well-being. Previous research of the RISKIT programme provided evidence of a potential effect in reducing substance use and risky behaviour in adolescents.

Support Needs in Carers of People With Parkinson's From Early to Later Stages: A Qualitative Study With 36 Carers in 11 European Countries.

Background: Parkinson's Disease (PD) is associated with considerable carer burden, but there has been little qualitative research on the support needs of carers of People with Parkinson's (PwP).

Methods: Semi-structured in-depth interviews with carers of PwP in 11 European countries.

Results: Interviews with 36 carers of PwP were analysed.

Study protocol: evaluation of the 0-5 public health investment in England - a mixed-methods study integrating analyses of national linked administrative data with in-depth case studies.

Introduction: Health visiting is a long-established, nationally implemented programme that works with other services at a local level to improve the health and well-being of children and families. To maximise the impact and efficiency of the health visiting programme, policy-makers and commissioners need robust evidence on the costs and benefits of different levels and types of health visiting, for different families, in different local contexts.

Methods And Analysis: This mixed-methods study will analyse individual-level health visiting data for 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 linked with longitudinal data from children's social care, hospitals and schools to estimate the association of number and type of health visiting contacts with a range of children and maternal outcomes.

Research engagement and research capacity building: a priority for healthcare organisations in the UK.

Purpose: To research involvement of healthcare staff in the UK and identify practical organisational and policy solutions to improve and boost capacity of the existing workforce to conduct research.

Design/methodology/approach: A mixed-method study presenting three work packages here: secondary analysis of levels of staff research activity, funding, academic outputs and workforce among healthcare organisations in the United Kingdom; 39 Research and Development lead and funder interviews; an online survey of 11 healthcare organisations across the UK, with 1,016 responses from healthcare staff included for analysis; and 51 interviews of healthcare staff in different roles from six UK healthcare organisations.

Findings: Interest in research involvement is strong and widespread but hampered by a lack of systematic organisational support despite national policies and strategies to increase staff engagement in research.

How can the priorities of older, frail patients and their carers be used to inform policy and practice at the end of life? Insights from qualitative research across multiple settings.

Objectives: The paper reports on experiences from older patients and their carers of current provision of end-of-life care in England. It draws on data from a study that sought to explore the extent to which national policy for end-of-life care in England was aligned with the aspirations of stakeholders. Specifically, the study explored the balance between clinical healthcare vs social and relational care asking how this was aligned to patient priorities at this time of life.

Exploring early career researchers' perspectives of training and funding opportunities: Motivations and setbacks when applying for the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Research's fellowships and research funding.

Despite the availability of training and funding opportunities with the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), early career researchers (ECRs) invariably experience concern in sustaining an academic career in health research given the uncertainties of success following rejection from peer-reviewed funding bodies. The objective of this study was to consider what motivates ECRs when applying for funding to NIHR programmes and how they overcome funding setbacks. Eleven ECRs took part in a one-to-one virtual in-depth interview; the sample included more women (n = 8) than men (n = 3) and participants included pre-doctoral researchers (n = 5), and both doctoral (n = 2) and post-doctoral (n = 4) ECRs.