15 Dec 2022
Feel free get in touch with us via email or social media.
© UEA. All rights reserved. University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ, UK
2022: our year in review
A year of collaboration. A year of action.
It’s been a jam-packed year of funding, supporting, and connecting research and innovation leaders from across our region. A sincere thanks to our governance board members, our research leads, and our partnership staff and supporters - our success is your success, and we hope you enjoy reading through this year’s highlights.
Join us as we look back on 2022.
January
We welcomed a new year, and welcomed new staff
We kicked off the new year by welcoming two new members of staff: Research Director Carrie Jackson, and our Projects Administrator, Bianca Bianchi.
February
Driving forward new medical innovation
We hosted a collaborative workshop which linked together like-minded local NHS clinical specialists and UEA researchers looking to coordinate the implementation of a regional 3D medical printing service. 3D printing has many benefits for clinical use, including the production of surgical models to help plan and support surgeries and implants. Housing a 3D facility regionally will support the delivery of patient centred services, allowing more effective treatment to be delivered to patients faster, and offering significant cost-saving for the NHS.
The partnership’s POC 3DP research group’s primary ambition is to drive forward joint discussions to develop and run a regional 3D Printing capability which would include a 3DP service within one of our hospitals for clinical use, and an off-site R&D service at UEA to facilitate medical innovation and technology transfer of our region.
We're supporting children’s online safety
LANTERN research group lead Dr Simon P Hammond’s research informed an important training course launched with Internet Matters and The Fostering Network that empowers foster carers to support children's digital usage.
Encouraging COVID vaccine uptake
Learning Disabilities Nurse and Learning Disabilities research group member Rebecca Crossley gave us something to smile about throughout February, and indeed throughout the year, by tweeting stories about kids receiving their COVID vaccines at James Paget’s brilliant accessible vaccine clinic.
April
New Research Group Aim to Boost Rehabilitation Innovation
We launched a new research group, AbiliTec, led by UEA’s Dr Nicola Hancock, and Lecturer in Physiotherapy and Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor Innovation at UEA. The group is a collaborative initiative of clinicians and researchers looking to support co-production of innovative technologies for rehabilitation.
UEA Health and Social Care Partners turns 3, sets a new trajectory
In April, we celebrated our third anniversary, which ushered in a new strategic direction, transforming the partnership’s existing operational model to focus more closely on building capability for high quality practice-led research.
June
New UEA Initiative to embed Public Representation in Healthcare Education and Research
We supported the launch of The Citizens Academy, marking the start of an exciting new venture from UEA’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences that will directly work with the community in the development of health education and research.
Led by Professor Caitlin Notley, the Citizens Academy will engage closely with the wider community to enable a coordinated approach in the development of UEA’s health focused teaching and research through the involvement of public representation.
Research Capacity Building Funding Call Opens
We opened our 2022 funding call at the start of June for researchers to access seed corn funding to build capacity and capability for collaborative practice led research and innovation. Funding aims to improve the design, delivery and quality of health and social care services to meet population health needs across our community.
We asked that projects fit into one of the three themes selected by our partner organisations:
- Population health management
- Digital technologies to transform care delivery
- Children and young people's mental health
We welcomed a new Associate Member, Healthwatch Essex
Contributor Dr Kate Mahoney, Research Manager at Healthwatch Essex, introduced a new Research Ambassador Network that provides the opportunity for individuals to share their lived experiences to help improve health and social care provision.
July
We showcased the impact of our research
We celebrated the release of our Research Impact Report 2021-22, inviting leading researchers to showcase their research projects in an online celebratory event.
Explore our extensive activity in research and innovation across local health and social care in an extraordinary year. Thanks to our world-class researchers and partnership colleagues!
August
Funding boost for regional health and social care research projects
In August, a press release went out to announce the ten fantastic practice-led research projects that were awarded support in our latest Building Capacity Funding Round. Well done to all successful recipients!
Call for Scholarship applications goes live
This year’s scholarships enabled practitioners from partner organisations to apply for funding to support specific research activities focused on impact, including undertaking literature reviews, mentoring to support research design and development, and impact dissemination activities.
Our UEAHSCP Instagram account went live
Make sure you’re following us at http://www.instagram.com/ueahscp/
October
UEAHSCP Supports ARC East of England Research and Implementation Fellowship
We were delighted to sponsor one of this year’s this year’s NIHR ARC East of England Fellowship. The ARC Fellowship is aimed at clinicians, health & social care practitioners, voluntary sector staff and NHS managers across the East of England who would like to work at the interface of research and practice; develop an understanding of the research environment; and develop skills in research methodology, service redesign, change management and implementing evidence-based improvements into practice.
Online launch of AbiliTec brings innovators together
We hosted the official online launch of 'AbiliTec', a new technology collaboration that focuses on digital innovation in rehabilitation across the East of England and beyond.
CESSATION report (menopause day)
On menopause day, we reshared vital menopause research that we supported, led by Associate Member East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust, aiming to better understand menopause guidance from UK ambulance services, impacts on female ambulance staff, and service interventions to better support staff.
Norfolk Green Care Network comes on board as an Associate Member
In a contributor blog, Nigel Boldero introduces Norfolk Green Care Network and outlines the ways connecting with nature, or ‘green care’ can benefit health and wellbeing.
November
We announced this year’s practice-led catalyst scholarship recipients
Read on to learn more about the projects receiving a share of the funding.
Sincere congratulations to all.
We profiled Alex Church’s brilliant new project on how Artificial Intelligence can improve service delivery
Alex Church, Senior Programme Manager at NHS Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board (ICB) introduces his new Partnership funded project AI System Support In Service Triage (ASSIST) and discusses how digital innovation has the potential to transform delivery across regional children and young people’s mental health services and beyond.
We held our very first Research Sandpit
This November we held our first Research Sandpit event which provided structured networking opportunities and extended discussion time between researchers and partners to turn good ideas into research funding proposals. We brought together a cross sector community of practitioners, and active researchers across disciplines together with potential service users of research outcomes.
We’re jointly hosting a conference next year with UEA Citizens Academy
Our event will be held in person at the Enterprise Centre on the University of East Anglia campus. We’ll announce the conference theme shortly - it will be centred around celebrating and showcasing health and social care research collaboration, innovation, inclusion and engagement. We’ll be providing more information soon, including how to secure your free ticket, meanwhile, save the date: Wednesday 12 July 2023.
Any enquiries, please email the team at ueahscp@uea.ac.uk
December
We welcomed Eastern ARC as a new Associate Member
We were pleased to welcome The Eastern ARC as our newest Associate Member!
A strategic collaboration between UEA, University of Essex and University of Kent, we look forward to working closely together on tackling regional health and social care priorities. The Eastern ARC recently hosted ‘The Collaborative Coast’ conference, a chance to come together to discuss key questions facing our Eastern coastal region, from addressing health inequalities to preparing for climate change.
We’re getting excited for our next conference!
As we plan our next conference taking place on 12 July 2023, we’re looking back at the highlight reel from our first conference, co-led with Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, where we explored how to improve services to support young people’s mental health and wellbeing.
VC Prof David Richardson and NSFT’s Dr Jon Wilson spoke to us at the time about the importance of facilitating a collaborative forum to bring together experts to co-design research. We captured the voices of young service users with lived experience of mental health services & generated exciting new ideas to support practice-led mental health research and innovation across East Anglia.
We can’t wait to share more info about our next conference!
You can watch and share our highlight reel here.
We’re supporting a new pilot scheme that improves support for carers
In our latest contributor blog, Morag Farquhar, Professor of Palliative Care Research at UEA, introduces a new three-stage pilot scheme we're supporting which aims to improve support for carers.
We showcased a fantastic project, CHarMINg, co-producing interventions supporting multiple behaviour change in socially deprived communities.
We showcased one of the projects we funded in 2021 during our first ever ‘Power of Collaborative Research’ Strategic Fund, after inviting applications from projects that will undertake joint research that benefits our region’s healthcare services.
UEA’s Prof Wendy Hardeman introduces the main focus areas of one of four projects to receive a share of the £75k funding: CHarMINg, a collaborative project working to co-produce interventions supporting multiple behaviour change in socially deprived communities. It focuses on the ‘big four’ behaviours: unhealthy diets, smoking, physical inactivity, and excessive alcohol consumption.
Service users, practitioners, researchers and policy makers will work together to identify best practice and agree which interventions look to be most promising in terms of having the most important impact.
In the new year, we’ll share more news about the community impact of this project and further work with the Norwich Institute for Healthy Ageing.
You can listen and share the soundbite reel here.
Phew - what a year! Stay safe this holiday season, and we look forward to working together on 2023.
Related News & Events
No results, please try changing the filters
Stay up to date
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive news on the latest updates and projects in health and social care research.