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New Health Research Partnership launches

By: Matt Bemment

Last updated: Friday, 21 October 2022

A group of people standing talking in a foyer with tiled floors and looking at mounted posters on boards

The HRP launched at the ACCA, University of Sussex

The Health Research Partnership (HRP) was officially launched at a meeting on Friday 30 September. The meeting took place at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts and was well attended by representatives from across the partnership, including staff from Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) and the University of Sussex.

The HRP, established by BSMS, is an exciting initiative bringing together academic and NHS partners across Sussex. Across the partnership we will develop opportunities for shared research infrastructure, capacity building and collaboration to ensure each partner organisation realises their research ambitions.

The HRP is a partnership between:

Brighton and Sussex Medical School
University of Sussex
University of Brighton
University Hospitals Sussex
Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
NHS Sussex Integrated Care Board

and collaborates with:

NIHR Clinical Research Network, Kent Surrey and Sussex
Research Design Service South East
NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) Kent, Surrey and Sussex

Delegates heard from Prof Malcolm Reed on how this partnership builds on the work of the Joint Clinical Research Office to bring together research governance and management to support researchers and to address the challenge of improving our health and care research performance.

Prof Martin Llewelyn further described the work of the HRP which in partnership with our NHS, Academic and key stakeholders build on national directives such as the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Best Research for Best Health: The Next Chapter and the Department of Health & Social Care: Saving and Improving Lives: The Future of UK Clinical Research Delivery. All these put embedding research into the heart of patient care and making participation as easy as possible for both staff and participants as a key point as well as addressing health care inequalities. The HRP will address these challenges for the people we care for, the people who work here and for the people we educate and train. It is also an opportunity to release untapped potential and to deliver the evidence relevant to the people of Brighton and Sussex.

The HRP has three workstreams that aims to build the links between partners, have cross partner input into each. Each workstream will identify shared resources, common interests and synergies and will identify opportunities and will work on proposals to take forward the work of the HRP.

Attendees then heard from the three leads from each workstream.

Nicky Perry who Chairs the Building Research Capacity & Training workstream described the aims of the group which includes working with Early Career Researchers (ECRs) to establish joined up pathways and to build capacity which will identify opportunities for building research and training capacity and opportunities across the partnership. ECRs have been identified as any academic or health/social care professional who have started to undertake health research as part of their career and who have undertaken some level of research training e.g. Masters, PhD. The scoping work has started to gather information on who the ECRs are and to see what training is already provided and this alongside looking at who

best to build capacity is on-going.

Scott Harfield Chairs the Infrastructure workstream and he presented the NIHR overview of what is infrastructure and described the local landscape of organisational (JCRO, CTU, NHS and University Research offices and services, the physical facilities (Clinical Research Facility, CISC, Labs etc), Digital (systems and databases, electronic patient records and software and support, the Expertise & Skills (which includes Statistics, Policy, Scientific, Clinical etc) and finally the Networks and Collaborations (ARC, AHSN, Universities, NHS, Industry and NIHR). The workstream will be reviewing and mapping partners current infrastructure to identify strengths, weaknesses and gaps from different perspectives, including ECRs, researchers at project design and grant application and the post award stage.

Martin Llewelyn Chairs the Academic workstream and described the work of the group to act as a conduit between research groups active in health research across the HRP. The group will also be developing collaborations, developing proposals for research development and explore external partnerships with 3rd sector, industry and academic organisations.

To date the group have defined what research is in within the scope of the partnership which is aligned to the NIHR definition of “research which seeks answers to questions about the best options available then uses these discoveries to make decisions about improvements or changes in order to:

diagnose diseases earlier or more accurately
provide life-changing treatments
prevent people from developing conditions
improve health and care for generations to come
ensure everyone has a better quality of life

The workstream is also building profiles and establishing routes of communication between the HRP and the academic groups.

The audience then heard from Prof Richard Trembath who is the Senior Vice-President (Health and Life Sciences) at King’s College London and he is also the Executive Director of King’s Health Partners. The King’s Academic Health Science Centre covers a wide geographical area and includes the three campus at St Thomas’, Denmark Hill and Guys. The three integrated sites are key to realising benefits, with estates liaison. Prof Trembath emphasised the importance of ensuring there is cultural alignment, engagement and goodwill from leadership across the organisations at all levels, reflected in governance structures. At King’s the 22 Clinical Academic groups act as a mechanism for engagement, relationship building and planning in certain key strategic areas. He went to talk about how shared strategies and major research infrastructure in key areas that are identified locally are key and how joint working on future strategies are a key component of success. His overview of the Health Partner’s gave a great insight as to the future direction of the Brighton and Sussex HRP and he was very encouraging about how far we have come in a short space of time and there were lots of ideas about how the infrastructure could be developed locally across infrastructure and clinical-academic training.

Finally there was a panel discussion Chaired by Prof Jackie Cassell where the audience was given the opportunity to ask questions. Prof Trembath input was highly valued by both panel members and he audience and the HRP management group were left with lots of ideas on how to guide the direction of the HRP.

Find out more about the IRP here >

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