Multimorbidity

Early funding from the School enabled the University of Manchester to rapidly develop their work on multimorbidity, and to establish their reputation in this area. In particular a number of publications have contrinuted to evidence and guidance reported in health policy documents, such as Bower et al., (2011) in the systematic review for NICE Guidelines for Multimorbidity: clinical assessment and management (NG56)[1].

Roberts et al., (2012) in The Australian Health Policy Collaboration document ‘Beyond the fragments: preventing the costs and consequences of chronic physical and mental diseases’[2]; and Blakemore et al., (2014) in the NICE ‘Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in over 16s: diagnosis and management’ guidance. [3]

 School funding also led to the generation of external funding income: 

• The Multimorbidity programme of the National Institute for Health Research Greater Manchester Primary Care Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (NIHR GM PSTRC)(Daker-White et al., 2014).
• The ‘Collaborative Interventions for Circulation and Depression (COINCIDE) trial’, funded by the Greater Manchester (GM) Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC). The trial found that collaborative care incorporating brief low intensity psychological therapy in partnership with practice nurses in primary care can reduce depression and improve self-management of chronic disease in people with mental and physical multimorbidity.
• The ‘Comprehensive Longitudinal Assessment of Salford Integrated Care (CLASSIC): a study of the implementation and effectiveness of a new model of care for long-term conditions’ funded by the NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research (HSDR) Programme. This study is designed to evaluate the ability of the Salford Integrated Care Programme (SICP) to deliver improvements in experience, health outcomes and cost effectiveness in older patients. This research also led to the University of Bristol’s NIHR HSDR award for ‘Improving the management of patients with multimorbidity in general practice (3D) Trial’.
• Equally, early School funding for recruitment research supported the Medical Research Council (MRC) Methodology Research Programme (MRP) ‘Systematic Techniques for Assessing Recruitment to Trials (START)’ which is a programme of research designed to test recruitment interventions. In turn this has led to a NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship, NIHR HSDR ‘TRials Engagement in Children and Adolescents (TRECA) study, and supporting the University of Manchester’s membership of the North West Hub for Trials Methodology Research.