Can Volunteering Help Create Better Health and Care. An evidence review.

This report was commission by Sir Thomas Hughes-Hallett founder of HelpForce in March 2017 to review the current evidence on the effectiveness, deployment and impact of volunteers in the NHS, to support the organisation’s work in maximizing the potential of volunteering in health and social care. This report’s remit was to pull together evidence to help answer the following questions: 1. What volunteer / lay roles are effective in health and care? 2. What do we know about the effective recruitment, management and deployment of volunteers (in any setting)? 3. What evidence is there about the impact of volunteers in health and social care, within England health and social care organisations, and from voluntary sector initiatives working into health and social care

The Asset Based Health Inquiry: How best to develop social prescribing

Phrases like ‘social prescribing’ and ‘coproduction’ speak to missing elements from mainstream healthcare – the need for broader than pharmacological solutions (social prescribing) and for sharing the responsibilities for maintaining and recovering health (coproduction). Neither of these approaches have yet been able to make the required impact on mainstream health services. The social prescribing initiative set out under the NHS long-term plan that is now being put into practice by NHS England (2019), is in some respects a vindication of our approach, developed by the Health Systems Innovation Lab at LSBU, where we have studied and promoted more humane approaches to healthcare, working closely with many of the pioneers of social prescribing in the UK. But on closer examination, we were not quite so sure the match was complete. Some of the key people who have developed the most important social innovations in primary care were nervous about it. It was not clear whether they were nervous about the language of ‘social prescribing’ or about the organisation of social prescribing, as set out in NHS policy. We organised this brief Inquiry in order to find ou

Human cloning laws, human dignity and the poverty of the policy making dialogue

BACKGROUND: The regulation of human cloning continues to be a significant national and international policy issue. Despite years of intense academic and public debate, there is little clarity as to the philosophical foundations for many of the emerging policy choices. The notion of "human dignity" is commonly used to justify cloning laws. The basis for this justification is that reproductive human cloning necessarily infringes notions of human dignity. DISCUSSION: The author critiques one of the most commonly used ethical justifications for cloning laws – the idea that reproductive cloning necessarily infringes notions of human dignity. He points out that there is, in fact, little consensus on point and that the counter arguments are rarely reflected in formal policy. Rarely do domestic or international instruments provide an operational definition of human dignity and there is rarely an explanation of how, exactly, dignity is infringed in the context reproductive cloning. SUMMARY: It is the author's position that the lack of thoughtful analysis of the role of human dignity hurts the broader public debate about reproductive cloning, trivializes the value of human dignity as a normative principle and makes it nearly impossible to critique the actual justifications behind many of the proposed policies

Simulating the influences of groundwater on regional geomorphology using a distributed, dynamic, landscape evolution modelling platform

A dynamic landscape evolution modelling platform (CLiDE) is presented that allows a variety of Earth system interactions to be explored under differing environmental forcing factors. Representation of distributed surface and subsurface hydrology within CLiDE is suited to simulation at sub-annual to centennial time-scales. In this study the hydrological components of CLiDE are evaluated against analytical solutions and recorded datasets. The impact of differing groundwater regimes on sediment discharge is examined for a simple, idealised catchment, Sediment discharge is found to be a function of the evolving catchment morphology. Application of CLiDE to the upper Eden Valley catchment, UK, suggests the addition of baseflow-return from groundwater into the fluvial system modifies the total catchment sediment discharge and the spatio-temporal distribution of sediment fluxes during storm events. The occurrence of a storm following a period of appreciable antecedent rainfall is found to increase simulated sediment fluxes

Research campaigns in the UK National Health Service: patient recruitment and questions of valuation

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) aims to improve national ‘health and wealth' by providing infrastructural support to enable clinical research in National Health Service settings in England and Wales. Cognisant of the consequences of studies' failure to achieve required numbers of participants, it also actively campaigns to promote patient awareness of research, and willingness to participate in trials. In this paper, we analyse recent NIHR campaigns and policies designed to encourage patients to participate in clinical research to interrogate how they are implicated in the national bioeconomy. In doing so we expand the notion of ‘clinical labour' to include the work of patient recruitment and highlight an emergent obligation on patients to contribute to research processes. Whereas once patient knowledge and experience may have been devalued, here we draw on the concept of ‘assetisation' (Birch 2012) to explore the emergent relationship between healthcare system and patient as research participant. We consider how patients' contribution goes beyond the provision of standardised objects of valuation so that patients themselves may be perceived as assets to, not only recipients of, the national healthcare system

The European Cancer Patient’s Bill of Rights, update and implementation 2016

In this implementation phase of the European Cancer Patient’s Bill of Rights (BoR), we confirm the following three patient-centred principles that underpin this initiative: 1: The right of every European citizen to receive the most accurate information and to be proactively involved in his/her care. 2: The right of every European citizen to optimal and timely access to a diagnosis and to appropriate specialised care, underpinned by research and innovation. 3: The right of every European citizen to receive care in health systems that ensure the best possible cancer prevention, the earliest possible diagnosis of their cancer, improved outcomes, patient rehabilitation, best quality of life and affordable health care. The key aspects of working towards implementing the BoR are: - Agree our high-level goal. The vision of 70% long-term survival for patients with cancer in 2035, promoting cancer prevention and cancer control and the associated progress in ensuring good patient experience and quality of life. - Establish the major mechanisms to underpin its delivery. (1) The systematic and rigorous sharing of best practice between and across European cancer healthcare systems and (2) the active promotion of Research and Innovation focused on improving outcomes; (3) Improving access to new and established cancer care by sharing best practice in the development, approval, procurement and reimbursement of cancer diagnostic tests and treatments. - Work with other organisations to bring into being a Europe based centre that will (1) systematically identify, evaluate and validate and disseminate best practice in cancer management for the different countries and regions and (2) promote Research and Innovation and its translation to maximise its impact to improve outcomes

The nonadaptive nature of the H1N1 2009 Swine Flu pandemic contrasts with the adaptive facilitation of transmission to a new host

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The emergence of the 2009 H1N1 Influenza pandemic followed a multiple reassortment event from viruses originally circulating in swines and humans, but the adaptive nature of this emergence is poorly understood.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we base our analysis on 1180 complete genomes of H1N1 viruses sampled in North America between 2000 and 2010 in swine and human hosts. We show that while transmission to a human host might require an adaptive phase in the HA and NA antigens, the emergence of the 2009 pandemic was essentially nonadaptive. A more detailed analysis of the NA protein shows that the 2009 pandemic sequence is characterized by novel epitopes and by a particular substitution in loop 150, which is responsible for a nonadaptive structural change tightly associated with the emergence of the pandemic.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Because this substitution was not present in the 1918 H1N1 pandemic virus, we posit that the emergence of pandemics is due to epistatic interactions between sites distributed over different segments. Altogether, our results are consistent with population dynamics models that highlight the epistatic and nonadaptive rise of novel epitopes in viral populations, followed by their demise when the resulting virus is too virulent.</p

Clinical leadership: the challenge of making the most of doctors in management

The need to develop the leadership and management capability of clinicians is deemed fundamental to address the cost and quality issues associated with health-care provision. The challenge facing the NHS is how best to bring this about