Our Internal Evaluators were commissioned by the Yorkshire and Humber Health Innovation and Education Cluster (YH HIEC) to perform an evaluation. An Executive Summary of their findings can be downloaded here.

Following their evaluation findings for both CLAHRC and HIEC, our evaluators have produced a Key Messages for Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs), available for download here.

Health Inequalities Project Casebook 2008 - 2012

This Casebook is an engaging introduction to the work of the Health Inequalities theme of the SY CLAHRC. Designed with commissioners, providers and (ultimately) service users in mind, it reflects the type of challenges and opportunities presented and includes key learning points for services. We would also like to acknowledge the valuable contribution made by Peter Roderick to the Casebook's development.

Peter is on the local government leadership programme (NGDP), currently working at Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council and leading a variety of public health projects around integration and health inequalities. Prior to moving into local government management, he completed a PhD at the University of York in 2010 and has since published research on such diverse topics as music history, political theory, theology, and health policy.'

Click here to download the Health Inequalities Project Casebook 2008-2012

Whose diabetes is it anyway?
This report captures the outputs of the project working with young people with type 1 diabetes and their families in Rotherham and Barnsley. It presents the findings through a proposed information and support service that puts young people at its centre. This service was co-created by the young people, their families and key staff from the Rotherham Hospital Adolescent Diabetes Service through a creative design-led process.

The proposed service streamlines all that is positive about the existing provision into one brand and information resource "Whose Diabetes is it?" that brings in expertise from both inside and outside the NHS, in the form of peer support groups and clinical staff. This information is delivered via means that better fit young people's lifestyles such as text messaging, websites and in person. Finally it allows for young people and families to receive reassurance from others who know "what it's like".

The full report is available to download here

South Yorkshire Knowledge Translation Casebook
download here

Toolkit for Developing a Knowledge Translation Casebook
download here

Executive Summary: Dysphagia E-learning to Enhance Dysphagia Management in the Stroke Service
download here

Keeping Warm in Later Life (KWILLT) project within the Reducing Health Inequalties theme.

As part of the Keeping Warm in Later Life (KWILLT) project within the Reducing Health Inequalties theme, a series of 6 case studies called Pen Portaits have been developed to support staff in appropriate sectors in identifying older people who are at risk from being cold, and plan and provide services to help them.

The Pen Portraits are all based on six groups of vulnerable older people who have been identified as being at risk of being cold for different reasons. Each group represents a 'segment' of older people in society and contains people who share a combination of factors which influence them in keeping warm. For each group a pen portrait has been developed. The six pen portraits are not real people but are case studies which summarise and illustrate the experience and situations of older people at risk of being cold. Across the board we have found that all these groups are poorly informed about some aspect of keeping warm.

Further details can be found here

The Winter Warmth evaluation report

The Yorkshire and Humber region has around half a million households living in fuel poverty. Nearly 90 per cent of all excess winter deaths are of people over the age of 65. Older people are particularly at risk of dying during the winter as they are often less resilient to cold-related illnesses, especially people with existing health problems.

In 2011-12, a range of organisations across Yorkshire and the Humber came together to secure funding from the Department of Health’s ‘Warm Homes, Healthy People Fund’. The funding supported the ‘Winter Warmth’ project, to help those whose work impacted on people who were vulnerable to the harm caused by cold weather, and to plan and prepare more effectively in line with the Cold Weather Plan for England.

The Winter Warmth project led to the successful development of an online toolkit which provided a wide range of resources to enable organisations and their vulnerable target audiences to prepare for winter and receive messages that would help them reduce the risk of harm from cold weather.

The project partners recognised that although many different groups within society are considered ‘vulnerable’ to the adverse effects of cold weather, the time and resources available for the development of the toolkit meant that resources should be focussed around a specific target group. Using local evidence gathered from the Keeping Warm In Later Life projecT (KWILLT) findings phase one of the toolkit focused on older people.

The evaluation and reported effectiveness of the winter warmth toolkit can be downloaded here  

The Keeping Warm In Later Life project (KWILLT) is an adopted project of CLAHRC-SY and the findings were used to inform the development of the Winter Warmth England toolkit.  The toolkit and evaluation report were funded by the Department of Health’s Warm Homes Healthy People fund and the Yorkshire and Humber Strategic Health Authority.

Ready Steady Go telehealth implementation toolkit

The Ready Steady Go Toolkit & Executive summary are available to
download here

CLAHRC SY has collaborated with an EU-funded project called Regional Information and Communication Technology based Clusters for Health Care Applications and R&D integration (RICHARD) to launch a new toolkit to help organisations implement telehealth successfully.

There has been much interest in the development of telehealth but few services have become mainstream. Those who have tried it soon realise it is a complex intervention that is difficult to get right. In part this may explain the mixed evidence base that points towards some deployments being successful while others have failed.

Based on experience, and validated by national and international colleagues, the Ready Steady Go toolkit provides a framework that can be followed by organisations as they incorporate telehealth, and which should provide a supportive environment in which telehealth can flourish.

Anyone involved in the delivery of a telehealth programme should find value in this toolkit. For those new to telehealth it provides a detailed account of steps that should be covered, and provides insight into common mistakes and ways in which progress can be monitored. For those with more experience, benefit could still be derived as it may provide new insights into certain aspects of service implementation along with a clear over-riding framework that can assist in ensuring all aspects of the programme are managed effectively.

This toolkit has received the following positive review by www.telecareaware.com:

'Ready Steady Go' telehealth implementation toolkit: Surprisingly good (UK)
Wednesday, 19 September 2012 17:12

Any document that runs to 108 pages and sets itself up to be a guide to implementing a telehealth programme runs the risk of being disregarded with a world-weary, cynical sigh. That would be a mistake in the case of the 'Ready Steady Go' telehealth implementation toolkit just published by the Sheffield-based South Yorkshire Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC), part of the NHS's National Institute for Health Research. The publication of this supplier agnostic and free toolkit has surely saved the 3 Million Lives (3ML) campaign a shed load of money, as well as time.

The authors are well known figures in the UK's telehealth community... Dr Simon Brownsell and Tim Ellis (with inputs from a number of experts around Europe) and the work was funded by the European Commission's RICHARD Project. However, good credentials do not necessarily mean that the content will be useful or readable. Well, this editor (Steve) is happy to report that it is very readable thanks to structuring it around the analogy of preparations for, undertaking, and reviewing, a race. Even better, the toolkit is illustrated with pictures of real people not stock photos of models, the curse of too many documents and websites these days.

And in case you are wondering, their definition of 'telehealth' is wide:"...the use of Information and Communication Technologies to support healthcare at a distance between a medical or care professional and a patient." but the focus is clearly on remote vital signs monitoring.

Designed for all practitioners in health and social care, this collection of 10 case studies shows how evidence can be used in commissioning for ethnic communities to:

• Raise the profile of BME issues
• Understand particular needs
• Design solutions
• Monitor and create on-going improvement

These short, direct, and easy to read, taster stories link to more detailed descriptions to help overcome common barriers in service design and delivery, and give practical, real word examples of using evidence in innovative ways.