For the first time, The Open University (OU) has joined a consortium of partners on a five-year applied research collaboration to develop and test practical solutions that improve health and care services for communities across the Thames Valley and beyond.<\/p>\n
The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) ARC Thames Valley is hosted by Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and is one of ten ARCs across England funded through a national \u00a3157 million investment by the NIHR.<\/p>\n
The NIHR ARC Thames Valley aims to make health and care better, faster and more efficient for patients. It will focus on developing new ways of preventing and managing health conditions and moving these into practical use. This will ensure the latest research directly shapes the way health and care services are designed and delivered.<\/p>\n
The OU is joining the ARC Thames Valley\u2019s consortium of 29 partners including universities, NHS Trusts, charities, community organisations, companies and local authorities. Its work will be guided by the everyday health and care needs of people across the Thames Valley, particularly those with complex care needs. It will involve more people with health conditions and members of the public as active participants alongside health researchers and the region\u2019s decision makers.<\/p>\n
Research across the ARC Thames Valley will focus on three key themes \u2013 starting well, living well and ageing well. Projects will include developing ways to help new mums, children and young people with physical and mental health problems, supporting working age adults with multiple health conditions to live well, and promoting brain and heart health in the elderly.<\/p>\n
In response to record demand for social care services, the collaboration will also work to develop new models of social care, so that people continue to be healthy, happy and independent in their own homes for as long as possible including with the help of novel digital technologies.<\/p>\n
Several of the projects are designed to build on work that has already helped to guide health and social care teams to develop their services. This includes an evaluation of the recently introduced Oxfordshire Family Solutions Plus Programme. It\u2019s improved approach to child safeguarding supports the whole family to keep children safely at home by embedding domestic abuse, mental health and substance misuse specialists into social care teams. The evaluation found it reduces the time children spend in social care, providing evidence for UK councils and agencies to consider this service for their own communities.<\/p>\n
The OU will have an excellent opportunity to significantly contribute to capacity building across the ARC Themes, opening doors for collaboration with healthcare providers and top universities.<\/p>\n
Jitka Vseteckova, Senior Lecturer in the OU\u2019s School of Health, Wellbeing & Social Care, commented:<\/strong><\/p>\n “This is a fantastic milestone for the work we’ve been doing and a real testament to the commitment of our colleagues to building research capacity. This is the first time that the OU has been named as a partner on the bid, and being part of ARC2 opens up exciting opportunities to work closely with an even wider range of partners \u2013 from local healthcare providers to leading academic institutions across the Thames Valley. I\u2019m really looking forward to what we can achieve together.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Professor Felicity Astin, Professor of Nursing in the OU\u2019s School of Health, Wellbeing & Social Care, commented:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2018Getting the Open University the opportunity to contribute to this regional consortium has been a personal ambition of mine as a way to strengthen our research environment. By working with our partners, we can build upon our successes with NIHR grant funding to conduct research that enhances our societal impact; a goal that is central to the OU mission\u2019<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Professor Kam Bhui, Director of the NIHR ARC Thames Valley at the University of Oxford, commented:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe ARC Thames Valley will work to close the gap between research and practice. We\u2019re bringing together some of the region\u2019s best health researchers with a range of organisations so that together we can ensure that new research findings directly shape how services are designed and delivered in the Thames Valley, especially for communities where inequalities are greatest.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the first time, The Open University (OU) has joined a consortium of partners on a five-year applied research collaboration to develop and test practical solutions that improve health and care services for communities across the Thames Valley and beyond. The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) ARC Thames Valley is hosted by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":23096,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[862,1525,1640],"class_list":["post-28333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-languages-health","tag-faculty-of-wels","tag-news-home","tag-ou-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28334,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28333\/revisions\/28334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}