How NIHR ARCs rose to the challenge of COVID-19

A national publication highlighting how National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaborations (NIHR ARCs) rose to the challenge of COVID-19 launches today, the third anniversary of the first UK lockdown.

Vital work from across the ARCs in response to the pandemic is showcased in NIHR ARCs: Supporting the fight against COVID-19 (PDF), including three ARC North Thames projects:

1. NHS CHECK: Understanding and mitigating the psychosocial impact of COVID-19 on NHS staff in England
2. Tackling barriers to COVID-19 vaccine uptake in London
3. London Strategic Research Health and Care Learning System

The publication brings together case studies demonstrating how ARCs pivoted their research programmes in response to the pandemic. It showcases work across a range of themes including children and young people, care homes, equality and diversity, end of life care and workforce planning.

Professor Rosalind Raine, Director NIHR ARC North Thames, says:

“Our world leading research expertise across a wide range of disciplines, combined with longstanding partnerships with the NHS, public health and social care and our ability and commitment to flexing to major emergent priorities, led to key research and impacts.

Since April 2020, we co-lead the largest UK study of 23,000 NHS staff (with Kings College London). NHS CHECK follows their mental health and wellbeing over time using questionnaires, supplemented by qualitative interviews and 1:1 consultations. Our results are the most accurate measures of general psychological distress and psychiatric conditions. This includes finding that 8% of staff met criteria for a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) - twice that of the general population. We also undertook a randomised controlled trial which demonstrated the effectiveness of a smartphone app mental health intervention. We shared our results with Medical and Nursing Royal Colleges, the NHS and policy makers to identify feasible approaches to better supporting the NHS workforce.

A partnership with public health colleagues across London has allowed us to pinpoint communities with low COVID-19 vaccine uptake, to explore the reasons for this and to design tailored approaches with the aim of tackling barriers to COVID-19 vaccine uptake in London. We identified lessons, taken up in national guidelines to ensure prompt and equitable vaccination uptake in future national programmes. We have also established another enduring partnership across the London NHS and academia as a result of the success of the London Strategic Health and Care Learning System which we rapidly co-ordinated to understand the extent to which major COVID-stimulated changes were positive and if there were any adverse consequences."

The publication was led by NIHR ARC East Midlands, with communications support from NIHR ARC West. In the foreword, the ARC Directors write:

“In 2020, we made rapid changes to our research programmes across the ARCs, to inform policy and practice, improve health and care, and deliver national-level impact in this rapidly changing landscape.

“Our expertise in data modelling, multi-morbidity, mental health and social care alongside our ability to build and sustain collaborations across the NHS, social care, the voluntary sector and industry, has placed us in a unique position. We have been able to contribute to the efforts to understand the virus and its impact on communities, locally, nationally and globally.

“This publication outlines our response as ARCs, both collectively and individually, to this challenge. It showcases the part we have played in supporting the health and care sector and patients, public and communities. We are proud of our part in lending our expertise to understanding the disease and assisting the global effort to contain it, improving outcomes and saving lives.”

Professor Lucy Chappell, Chief Executive of the NIHR and the Department of Health and Social Care’s Chief Scientific Advisor, said:

“The COVID-19 pandemic was unlike any health crisis we had experienced for a century. In order for us to tackle the pandemic swiftly and strongly, we needed a collaborative and sustained approach across health and care research that harnessed the power of our collective effort like never before.

“This impressive report sets out how that effort was provided, extending across many different themes, specialisms, and areas of the country. It illustrates how researchers, working together to tackle a common cause, can have such an important impact for patients and the public.”

Download NIHR ARCs: Supporting the fight against COVID-19 (PDF).

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