Impacts of ambient air quality on acute asthma hospital admissions during the COVID-19 pandemic in Oxford City, UK: a time-series study.

Objectives: The study aims to investigate the short-term associations between exposure to ambient air pollution (nitrogen dioxide (NO), particulate matter pollution-particles with diameter<2.5 µm (PM) and PM) and incidence of asthma hospital admissions among adults, in Oxford, UK.

Design: Retrospective time-series study.

Population Health Management in Diabetes Care: Combining Clinical Audit, Risk Stratification, and Multidisciplinary Virtual Clinics in a Community Setting to Improve Diabetes Care in a Geographically Defined Population. An Integrated Diabetes Care Pilot in the North East Locality, Oxfordshire, UK.

Background: Disparities in diabetes care are prevalent, with significant inequalities observed in access to, and outcomes of, healthcare. A population health approach offers a solution to improve the quality of care for all with systematic ways of assessing whole population requirements and treating and monitoring sub-groups in need of additional attention.

Description Of The Care Practice: Collaborative working between primary, secondary and community care was introduced in seven primary care practices in one locality in England, UK, caring for 3560 patients with diabetes and sharing the same community and secondary specialist diabetes care providers.

Experience of adopting faecal immunochemical testing to meet the NICE colorectal cancer referral criteria for low-risk symptomatic primary care patients in Oxfordshire, UK.

Objective: To compare the diagnostic performance of guaiac faecal occult blood (gFOB) testing with faecal immunochemical test (FIT) in a low-risk symptomatic primary care population to provide objective data on which to base local referral guidelines.

Design: Stool samples from routine primary care practice sent for faecal occult blood testing were analysed by a standard gFOB method and the HM-JACKarc FIT between January and March 2016. Symptoms described on the test request were recorded.

Standard set of health outcome measures for older persons.

Background: The International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM) was founded in 2012 to propose consensus-based measurement tools and documentation for different conditions and populations.This article describes how the ICHOM Older Person Working Group followed a consensus-driven modified Delphi technique to develop multiple global outcome measures in older persons. The standard set of outcome measures developed by this group will support the ability of healthcare systems to improve their care pathways and quality of care.

The Suspected CANcer (SCAN) pathway: protocol for evaluating a new standard of care for patients with non-specific symptoms of cancer.

Introduction: Cancer survival in England lags behind most European countries, due partly to lower rates of early stage diagnosis. We report the protocol for the evaluation of a multidisciplinary diagnostic centre-based pathway for the investigation of 'low-risk but not no-risk' cancer symptoms called the Suspected CANcer (SCAN) pathway. SCAN is a new standard of care being implemented in Oxfordshire; one of a number of pathways implemented during the second wave of the Accelerate, Coordinate, Evaluate (ACE) programme, an initiative which aims to improve England's cancer survival rates through establishing effective routes to early diagnosis.