“Excellent in the food and stimulating for the mind”, was the conclusion of Professor Pam Enderby, Director of South Yorkshire CLRN, who closed the two day CLAHRC Knowledge Exchange Event held on behalf of all nine national NIHR CLAHRCs.

The event, which was hosted by CLAHRC for South Yorkshire in association with the SDO network, attracted over 200 delegates each day from a range of backgrounds including patients, practitioners, senior managers and researchers.  The delegates were invited to view a range of excellent oral and poster presentations on a variety of topics, including patient and public involvement, implementation of research findings, multidisciplinary collaborative working, innovation, living with long-term conditions, extending services and evaluation of the impact of CLAHRCs.

The invited and offered oral presentations, including keynote speeches given by Professors Dame Sandra Dawson, Ian Graham, Kate Gerrish, Hilary Chapman and John Gabbay, will shortly be available for download from this website. Both days also incorporated SDO Network Learning Together activities. More information on these sessions can be obtained from: Jill.Fairbank@nhsconfed.org

Sheffield Children’s Clinical Research Facility kindly sponsored four poster prizes to be awarded during the event, which were voted for by the delegates.

Winners of the poster prizes were:

• Eva Marie Hempe, CLAHRC for Cambridge and Peterborough – PhD category
  
  
• Gemma Heath, CLAHRC for Birmingham and Black Country – PhD category
  
  
• Alexander Komashie, CLAHRC for Cambridge and Peterborough
  
  
• Alison Seymour, CLAHRC for Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire

The Health Foundation generously sponsored the drinks reception, which preceded the event dinner, held at Hallam Hall, Sheffield Hallam University.

As hosts, CLAHRC South Yorkshire were delighted to have had such an overwhelming interest in our knowledge exchange event, and we would like to thank everyone who came along and made it such a success. 

Our overall event objectives, which we feel were fully achieved, were as follows:

• To highlight successes, challenges, barriers and opportunities within CLAHRCs
• To discuss and debate key issues and explore the challenges of getting knowledge into practice
• To explore the challenges of innovation for the NHS and the relationship with CLAHRCs
• To explore the challenges and opportunities of co-production in research and implementation
• To generate discussion on facilitators and barriers to Public and Patient Involvement
  in research and knowledge utilisation

Each day of the event also had further specific objectives:
Day 1:

• To set CLAHRCs in the international policy context of health research and knowledge translation and other global collaborations
• To discuss ways that we may measure the impact of CLAHRCs
• To describe models of implementation that promote knowledge translation

Day 2:

• To describe the nature and scope of collaborations within, and linked to CLAHRC SY
• To share current research and implementation activities within CLAHRC themes
• To increase awareness of the research capacity building and knowledge translation
  opportunities available through the CLAHRC SY
• To debate how the CLAHRC SY can contribute to the challenges of innovation in the NHS
• To provide case studies of PPI in CLAHRC SY