Who, What and Why?
Who is PenCLAHRC?
PenCLAHRC is a partnership between the NHS throughout Devon and Cornwall and the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth.
Who are our partners?
We are a health and higher education collaboration involving two local universities and 13 NHS organisations.
The local strategic health authority, NHS South West, oversees a population of over 5 million people, providing strategic leadership of the NHS in the peninsula. It is responsible for the development of NHS organisations and staff, ensuring that the local NHS operates effectively and delivers improved health and healthcare performance. NHS South West is the lead administrative organisation for PenCLAHRC. In October 2011, NHS South West became part of NHS South of England, one of the new Strategic Health Authority clusters.
All NHS trusts in the far South West of England are included in the collaboration. This includes trusts with or currently seeking Foundation Trust status, two Partnership trusts which provide mental health and learning disability services, an integrated community health and adult social care trust, plus the region's ambulance and urgent care services trust:
Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Devon Partnership NHS Trust
NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly
NHS Devon
NHS Plymouth
NHS South West (from October 2011, part of the new NHS South of England cluster)
North Devon Healthcare NHS Trust
Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust
Plymouth University
Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust
Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust
South Devon Healthcare NHS Trust
South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust
Torbay Care Trust
University of Exeter
What is PenCLAHRC?
PenCLAHRC is one of nine NHS-university collaborations funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
Our aims are:
- Through research and educational activity, to further embed and fuel the partnership between the NHS and academia, building research capacity in applied health research and implementation.
- To treble the partnership's involvement in applied health research to enable us to become a major sustainable contributor to this field for the future.
- To promote engagement and involvement in research that reflects real clinical concerns, contributing to the creation of a research receptive culture in the local NHS.
Why was PenCLAHRC established?
CLAHRCs were commissioned in response to a recommendation from the High Level Group on Clinical Effectiveness set up by the Chief Medical Officer in late 2006.
The report of the HLG concluded that variation in practice was driven by; (a) the lack of high quality evidence addressing many key clinical questions,combined with, (b) the continuing failure to implement much existing evidence.
The Cooksey Review, published in 2006, had come to similar conclusions, highlighting a gap in translating research into practice and identifying two important steps to tackle this; identifying effective interventions and implementing these into practice. However, the reasons for failure of implementation are complex and our knowledge about the effectiveness of interventions to translate evidence into practice remains patchy. To help to address this, the HLG’s recommendations included developing new frameworks for closer working between clinicians and managers in the health and social services, and academics in higher education.
In response, the NIHR invited applications from regional partnerships between universities and NHS organisations for funding to establish pilot Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRCs). These partnerships are designed to undertake high quality applied health research focussed on the needs of patients and to support the translation of research evidence into practice in the NHS.
Where are the other CLAHRCs?
The other CLAHRCs are as follows:
NIHR CLAHRC for Northwest London
NIHR CLAHRC for Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland
NIHR CLAHRC for Greater Manchester
NIHR CLAHRC for Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire
NIHR CLAHRC for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough
NIHR CLAHRC for Leeds, York & Bradford
NIHR CLAHRC for South Yorkshire
NIHR CLAHRC for Birmingham & Black Country
