NIHR Three Research Schools - Seminar Series
Please address enquiries to Claire Ashmore: c.ashmore@keele.ac.uk
Previous Seminars
13 JANUARY 2025
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Making a Difference Through Your Research: Getting Started on Research Impact as an Early Career Researcher. Speakers: Dr Ruth Naughton-Doe Summary Background: Are you wondering how to begin the long journey of translating your research findings into meaningful, measurable impact? Ruth Naughton-Doe will share her story from her NIHR Three Schools Mental Health Programme Fellowship which explored solutions to perinatal loneliness. Ruth will reflect on how she built a research network, obtained funding for spin-off projects implementing the findings of her research, and is beginning to track and measure the changes that are happening in practice and research. |
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30 JANUARY 2025
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Care gaps among people presenting to the hospital following self-harm. Speaker: Dr Sarah Steeg Summary: Dr Sarah Steeg, Three Schools’ Mental Health Fellowship award holder, will present findings from her research into care gaps among people who have harmed themselves. Understanding the care and support people receive after they have sought help for self-harm is vital. Appropriate and timely care can help prevent further self-harm and is key for suicide prevention. Most research to date has focussed on the role of mental health services, including outpatient care, psychological therapies, crisis home treatment teams and inpatient mental health services. However, general practitioners (GPs), voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) services and social services can play a key role in providing self-harm aftercare. During this seminar, Sarah will discuss the types of services individuals accessed after self-harming and identify specific groups that may be experiencing gaps in care. She will also address the importance of co-developing measures of patients’ needs in collaboration with clinicians and individuals with lived experience of self-harm.
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12 FEBRUARY 2025
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Living well with severe mental ill-health: learning from implementing physical health support in different regional contexts.
Speakers: Emily Oliver, Ilaria Pina, Philippa Shaw, Zuneera Khurshid and Dan Steward
Summary: Enhancing physical health support for people living with severe mental ill-health is key to addressing the health inequalities experienced by this group. The seminar will bring together learning from different implementation approaches across the UK, sharing practical and scalable solutions on how to transform and reallocate resources within healthcare systems. This will lead to the promotion of conversations around care to better serve those living with severe mental ill-health to live healthy, longer and fulfilling lives.
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20 FEBRUARY 2025
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Beyond Tokenism: Meaningful Participation in Healthcare Innovation
Speaker: Dr David Hunt
Involving individuals with lived experience and relevant staff in research and improvement initiatives is fundamental for improving health-related experiences and outcomes. When done well, this approach ensures those core individuals in healthcare shape the development of research and improvement projects, aligning interventions with their needs and priorities to create sustainable change that is meaningful and implementable. However, some projects risk tokenism, where these groups are invited to contribute without clear guidance on their roles or when they should input, resulting in their insights being insufficiently incorporated into future developments. In this talk, David will explore how to avoid these pitfalls by addressing the challenges of meaningful engagement. An example will be provided to demonstrate how meaningful participation can be achieved, with a focus on ensuring transparency in how insights are translated into tangible improvements.
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6 MARCH 2025
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The Commercial Determinants of Mental Health
Speakers: Mark Petticrew and Alice Tompson, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
There’s a growing understanding of the ways businesses can impact our physical health, for example through products such as alcohol and tobacco. But what about their impact on our mental health? At this session, researchers from London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine will provide an overview of the Commercial Determinants of Health. They will then share the findings from their NIHR Three Schools funded project bringing together the evidence on the commercial determinants of mental health – including social media and gambling. They will also share what they found regarding population-level interventions to address the commercial determinants of mental health. |
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20 MARCH 2025
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Examining Access to Mental Health Services for Social Work-Experienced Young People
Speakers: Taliah Drayak; Julia Mannes and Robbie Duschinsky
Many children and young people with social work involvement experience mental health difficulties. Yet, little is known about factors affecting their access to Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). This session will present quantitative and qualitative findings from the “CAMHS Referrals and Outcomes for Adolescents and Children with Social Workers” (COACHES) study. It will cover:
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8 APRIL 2025
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Technology to Aid Preparation for NHS Talking Therapies
Speakers: Led by Nathan Hodson, Co-Lead (with Domenico Giacco), University of Warwick
1.7 million people are referred to NHS Talking Therapies annually. These short-focused courses of therapy are the first-line treatment for most people with anxiety and depression and can have a life-changing benefit for patients. However many patients face a significant wait and then struggle with the courses. Certain groups have been identified as currently disengaging more than others, including neurodiverse people and British Muslims. Nathan presents findings from his research into effective preparation for NHS Talking Therapies courses. He shares lessons from co-producing content to address concerns about talking therapies. He will also demonstrate how digital patient information technology offers a low-cost means of aiding preparation, increasing engagement and improving outcomes. |
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25 APRIL 2025
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Engaging marginalised young people in education
Speakers: Rhiannon Barker
Rates of school suspension and exclusion across the UK continue to rise. In the Autumn term of 2023/24 there were 346,279 suspensions. Children who are school excluded are both more likely to suffer mental health challenges and to become involved in criminal behaviours.
During this seminar, Rhiannon will talk about her qualitative Three Schools Fellowship which explored the intersections of school exclusion, mental health and involvement in criminal behaviour. She will discuss her public engagement work and show a video based around some of the research findings, produced by a team with experience of the issues being studied. She will conclude by involving the audience in a discussion considering how future research can build on interventions to promote school engagement.
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11 JUNE 2025 |
How can we improve the mental health of older adults?
Speakers: Carolyn Chew-Graham, Tom Kingstone and Tamsin Fisher
Depression and anxiety are common in older adults, and they are less likely to consult primary care with symptoms, have their difficulties recognised, or be referred (or self-refer) to NHS Talking Therapies. Comorbid anxiety and depression worsen the outcomes of long-term physical conditions. |
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15 JULY 2025
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Participatory modelling focusing on stakeholder engagement
Speakers: Maria Michail
Maria's seminar aims to highlight the merit of embedding a participatory modelling approach when developing complex systems models for suicide prevention; explore some of the challenges in relation to feasibility; and identify future directions to maximise the potential of participatory modelling to achieve better and more sustainable health outcomes.
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13 NOVEMBER 2024
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Experiences of and outcomes for Blackpool adults treated with Buvidal opioid substitution therapy. Speaker: Dr Rebecca Fish and Prof. Céu Mateus Summary: Blackpool Local Authority in the north of England experiences very high rates of drug misuse, drug crime and drug-related deaths. Buvidal (Buprenorphine prolonged-release injection) is a new injection treatment for people who are dependent on heroin. It is a form of ‘opioid substitution therapy’. There is very limited evidence on Buvidal use in community settings, but it may be of benefit for those who find it difficult to attend for daily supervised medication. This research evaluates the outcomes of Buvidal from the perspectives of service users in order to add to the body of evidence on this medication and to decide whether it is a cost-effective treatment for people with heroin dependence locally. This presentation will describe the findings from the mixed-method study, using qualitative interviews (around 20 participants) and administrative data to explore the outcomes of this intervention. With this work, we have generated evidence to help policymakers to decide on the rollout of this medication in other communities. We offer an understanding of what those who use Buvidal appreciate about the medication and the way it is given, and about what can be improved. |
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23 JANUARY 2023
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Developing research priority areas to improve treatment pathways and outcomes for people with co-occurring mental health problems and alcohol use disorders Speaker: Laura Goodwin, University of Lancaster & Phil Parkes, public contributor (Expert Citizens) Summary: In the presentation we will discuss the outcomes of two workshops which involved people with lived experience of co-occurring mental health and alcohol use disorders and public and third sector professionals. We will provide a summary of the findings, which includes i) an overview of the positives and negatives of the four different treatment pathways offered to this group and ii) the development of a top 10 list of research priority areas. |
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27 MARCH 2023
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Supported Volunteering at Ripon Museums: 'De-researchifying' research processes and methods in a sensitive way. Speakers: Martin Webber, Beth Casey & Helen Thornton Summary: Supported volunteering provides a way for people who require additional support to access volunteering opportunities. However, limited research has been conducted on supported volunteering so we do not know enough about how, and if, it might help people. This presentation reports on the qualitative methods used for an evaluation of supported volunteering at Ripon museums, a collaboration between the International Centre for Mental Health Social Research (ICMHSR) at the University of York and the Ripon Museum Trust (RMT). A range of methods have been utilised in order to provide a choice for participants and to facilitate participation. This included having conversations with volunteers about their experience of support (rather than more formal interviews); observing support provided; and giving volunteers the opportunity to complete an audio or written diary about their experiences. The presentation will reflect on the ‘sensitive’ research approach taken; uptake and experience of participating in different methods and comparisons between the data produced. The presentation will conclude with practical considerations and researcher reflections on the methods used. |
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26 APRIL 2023
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How we are involving parent carers of children with special educational needs and disabilities in our research, and what impact that has had on the SPaCE Project Speaker: Sharon Foxwell and Annabel McDonald, parent carer co-investigators, and Gretchen Bjornstad, University of Exeter Summary: It can be challenging to meaningfully involved people with lived experience in epidemiological studies from inception, so this would provide an opportunity to highlight some examples of how these parent carers have shaped the project, including involvement in defining the populations that we include, selecting predictors of mental health outcomes to include in the analyses, selecting the mental health outcomes to focus on, and thinking through the implications of our findings. We are also planning to involve parent carers in innovative dissemination strategies, including leading one of our papers and including specific subsections within the discussion sections of all of our papers for our parent carer co-investigators to describe their reflections on the findings. |
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03 MAY 2023
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Collaborating to develop holistic health support for people living with severe mental illness Speakers: Emily Oliver & Ilaria Pina, Newcastle University, and Sue Webster, peer researcher Summary: Our three schools’ funded project, WHOLE-SMI, explores holistic health promotion for people living with severe mental illness, an underserved population who have not typically been well-represented in research involvement and engagement. Here we present, with our peer researchers and community advisory group members, learning from this research. |
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12 JUNE 2023
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Using the Nominal Group Technique for organising a workshop for carers of people who have been discharged by mental health hospitals. Speakers: Maria Panagioti & Natasha Tyler, University of Manchester Summary: We will talk about the use of Nominal Group Technique for organising a workshop for carers of people who have been discharged by mental health hospitals. We will talk about how the technique has helped us develop topic areas, facilitate the workshop date and develop a set of research priorities for a future grant application. |
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12 JULY 2023
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Embedding and evaluating trauma-informed and co-production approaches with people who've experienced multiple disadvantage Speakers: Michelle Farr and Tracey Stone, University of Bristol & Thomas Traub and Rebecca, peer researchers Summary: Changing Futures is part of a government funded programme aimed at improving the lives of adults experiencing multiple disadvantages. Changing Futures in Bristol is working with organisations and people with lived experience to:
We will discuss how we are evaluating this work, sharing our learning to date, and explore how systems can be changed to promote more equality, co-production and trauma-informed care. |
18 OCTOBER 2022 |
The challenges of accessing and working with marginalised, vulnerable young people. Speaker: Rhiannon Barker, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Summary: My research is focused on exploring links between mental health, experience of school and gang membership of 11-18 year olds across England. I am currently in the scoping phase of the research, involving extensive consultation with a range of stakeholders including policy, practitioners, experts by experience and academics. I will discuss the innovative qualitative methodologies I am planning to use reflecting on both the challenges and opportunities. In particular I will look at issues of reflexivity and positionality reflecting on my position as a white, middle aged, entitled woman. |
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12 NOVEMBER 2022
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Exploring the impact of Patient, Public and Community Engagement and Involvement in the design and development of the Evaluation of the Recovery Navigator Programme in the North East and North Cumbria Speakers: Emma-Joy Holland, Newcastle University & Fiona Tasker, public contributor Summary Background: People who come to emergency departments on a regular basis with alcohol problems have high levels of need, often due to their mental ill-health. However, there is currently limited evidence on how to effectively support the transition from hospital to community-based support for heavy drinkers. This study seeks to evaluate a new role, Recovery Navigators, that will provide enhanced support regarding transition back into the community across the North East and North Cumbria (NENC) Integrated Care System (ICS). Recovery Navigators will offer bespoke support to address what matters to the client, e.g. housing, benefits or welfare, and will guide care within hospitals and, crucially, post-discharge. |
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12 DECEMBER 2022
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How public involvement led the project to focus on the mental health needs of carers Speaker: Clarissa Giebel, Senior Research Fellow, University of Liverpool, SPHR Summary: Heavily co-produced research with people with dementia, unpaid carers, health and social care professionals, and Charity providers into the impacts of the pandemic on dementia care in the community and in care homes has generated the idea for this funded study into the unmet mental health needs of paid and unpaid carers for older adults. The talk will give a brief overview of the original COVID-19 research, how lived experts and care providers were involved, and provide an overview of the ongoing NIHR-funded study. |
