Multimorbidity could cause a healthcare crisis – here’s what we can do about it
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Professor Chris Salisbury, Primary Health Care, University of Bristol
Multimorbidity is one of the biggest challenges facing healthcare. In recent years, a succession of research studies have shown that people with multiple health problems are more likely to have a worse quality of life, worse mental health and reduced life expectancy. The more health problems someone has, the more drugs they are likely to be prescribed and the more frequently they are likely to consult a GP or be admitted to hospital.
You might think this is all rather self-evident – it’s hardly a surprise that sick people get ill, take medicines and go to doctors more often than healthy people.
So why has multimorbidity become so prominent in discussions about healthcare over the last decade?
Statins and venous thromboembolism: should statins use extend beyond lowering cholesterol?
Dr Setor Kunutsor, Research Fellow in Evidence Synthesis/ Epidemiologist, School of Clinical Sciences, University of Bristol
Statins are well known and established for their role in the prevention of cardiovascular disease (heart attack, strokes, or angina) and this is based on their ability to lower levels of cholesterol in the blood.
However, there is evidence to suggest that statins have multiple effects and these include potential beneficial impacts on other disease conditions.
Venous thromboembolism is a condition involving the formation of blood clots in the veins of the lungs and lower limbs. It affects millions of people globally and is a preventable cause of hospital-related deaths.
Standard techniques for the prevention of venous thromboembolism include the use of elastic stockings, compression devices, patient mobility and rehabilitation, and anticoagulant therapy (blood thinning medications).
Deep Vein Thrombosis. Blausen.com staff (2014). “Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 2014“. WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 2002-4436
Evidence now suggests that statins also have the ability to reduce inflammation in the body and prevent the formation of blood clots. Based on these properties, there have been suggestions that statins may prevent venous thromboembolism.
Several studies have investigated this, however the evidence has not been conclusive until now.
We decided it was time to bring all the evidence together and evaluate if statins really did have a protective effect on the risk of developing venous thromboembolism.
Altogether we analysed 36 studies (13 observational cohort designs and 23 randomised controlled trials) with data on more than 3.2 million participants.
Our results showed a clear link between the use of statins and a reduced risk of developing venous thromboembolism. Continue reading
If academics are serious about research impact they need to learn from monitoring, evaluation and learning teams
The impact of academic research, particularly on policy and the private sector, is an increasingly important component of research assessment exercises and funding distribution. However, Duncan Green argues that the way many researchers think about their impact continues to be pretty rudimentary. A lack of understanding of who key decision-makers are, a less-than-agile response to real-world events, and difficulties in attributing credit are all hampering progress in this area. Looking at how impact is measured by aid agencies, there is much academics could learn from their monitoring, evaluation and learning teams.
Global Health: Antibiotics and Superbugs
In 1928 Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, thus bringing one of the greatest medical advances of our time: antibiotics.
Innocuous infections, operations and injuries were no longer a death sentence.
Since then, antibiotics have been developed to treat an array of diseases but this slowed, and then stopped in the 1980s. Although our arsenal of development ceased, the bacteria, viruses and fungi did not stop evolving.
This asymmetric development has resulted in an antimicrobial resistance problem: bacteria causing common infections and illnesses are now increasingly resistant to the drugs used to treat them.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Attribution notice: ‘Review on Antimicrobial Resistance.’ From the O’Neill Report in 2016.
Solving this issue is not straightforward.
It involves a complex landscape of policy makers, clinicians, vets, law makers, and many others.
As part of Bristol Doctoral College’s Research without Borders Festival 2017, a public discussion was held exploring the problem of superbugs and antibiotic resistance, in both the context of research happening at the university of Bristol, and from a wider perspective.
Discussions revolved around patent law, and how it may affect development of new drugs and solutions, the role of agriculture, in particular dairy farming, in reducing antimicrobial resistance, and what we can do as individuals to help address this problem.
Below is a brief snapshot of the research relating to antimicrobial resistance being undertaken across the University of Bristol by the postgraduate researchers who took part in the RWB discussion panel. Continue reading
It’s time to put mature students at the heart of widening participation
Why should we care about mature students?
It has become almost routine to read stories giving ‘more bad news’ about part-time student numbers in universities.
Tom Sperlinger is Reader in English Literature and Community Engagement at the University of Bristol.
Lizzie Fleming is Widening Participation and Student Recruitment Officer, and a postgraduate student, at the University of Bristol
On 29 June, the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), which monitors access to universities in the UK, published its outcomes for 2015-16. The report highlights a ‘crisis’ in part-time numbers, which have fallen for a seventh consecutive year, a decline of 61% since 2010-11. Since more than 90% of part-time students are over 21, this has also led to a significant decline in the number of mature students in the sector.
This also means that, overall, the number of students entering universities has fallen significantly since 2012. Continue reading
Scoping the impact of Brexit for NHS procurement
Dr Albert Sanchez Graells, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Bristol Law School
NHS England spends over £20 billion every year on goods and services. A significant part of the remainder of NHS non-salary budget involves the commissioning of health care services. This expenditure and commissioning is controlled by NHS procurement rules, which in part derive from EU law. NHS procurement rules are regularly criticised for imposing excessive red tape and compliance costs, and calls for NHS procurement reform to free it from such strictures are common.
In this context, Brexit could be seen as an opportunity to overhaul NHS procurement and to move away from the perceived excesses of EU law. This post concentrates on two issues. First, does EU law prevent significant reforms of NHS procurement and, if so, can Brexit suppress such constraints? Second, is the way Brexit is unfolding conducive to an improvement of NHS procurement? Continue reading
It’s in the EU’s interest to press ahead with Brexit negotiations
The extraordinary outcome of the UK general election and the uncertain domestic political climate has led to calls by Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon for a “short pause” in the Brexit process. Despite this, Brexit negotiations are now scheduled to begin on June 19.
Nieves Perez-Solorzano Borragan, Senior Lecturer in European Politics, University of Bristol
There are no advantages for the EU in delaying or pausing Brexit negotiations. It is ready and waiting to negotiate an orderly British withdrawal
Limiting the uncertainty caused by Brexit has been at the core of the EU’s narrative since the Brexit referendum. Delaying the negotiation process only prolongs uncertainty about the direction of Brexit. Meanwhile, the EU is eager to address other challenges such as the refugee crisis or an increasingly unpredictable international environment. A pause would also increase legal uncertainty: there is no agreement on whether it is legally possible to stop the Article 50 process, so the Court of Justice of the EU might have to intervene.
The UK Negotiating Position
The UK’s negotiating position outlined before the election appears under pressure as the prime minister, Theresa May, no longer has a parliamentary majority to sustain it. And as the negotiations start, the Government has not been forthcoming in making public its Brexit priorities after the general election, so the assumption is that they have not changed. Continue reading
The importance of the advice sector in the context of legal aid cuts
Dr Sarah Moore, Lecturer in Sociology (Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath).
The PolicyBristol blog has the pleasure of welcoming this guest post by Dr Sarah Moore, who was one of the participants in the recent book launch of Advising in Austerity. Reflections on challenging times for advice agencies (Policy Press, 2017). Dr Moore is also the co-author of Legal aid in crisis. Assessing the impact of reform (Policy Press, 2017) and offers here her insightful views on the need to boost the activities and funding of the legal advice sector.
Anyone familiar with legal aid reform will know that the Legal Aid and Sentencing of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) has dramatically altered the meaning and nature of legal aid. It has meant, amongst other things, a significant reduction in funding, largely achieved by taking a large number of areas of civil law out of scope, including private family law cases, and almost all cases involving social welfare, housing, medical negligence, immigration, debt, and employment.
The most strenuous critics of LASPO have pointed out that the recent funding cuts restrict people’s access to justice. In answering to these problems, LASPO incorporated a set of exceptions. Those who could provide evidence that they had been victims of domestic violence, for example, were to be given access to legal aid to pursue family law cases. And an Exceptional Case Funding caveat was incorporated in the Act for those who could successfully make a case that their human rights would be breached without publicly-funded legal assistance. Both have been woefully inadequate.
Research led by Rights of Women indicates that, even after the government relaxed the rules on domestic violence evidence and legal aid eligibility, a significant proportion of female victims (38% in their 2014 survey) did not have the mandatory evidence to receive publically-funded support. And the Exceptional Case Funding (ECF) scheme has been a disaster by anyone’s standards. In the first year post-LASPO, the Legal Aid Agency received only 1,520 applications for ECF. According to the Public Accounts Committee, only 69 were granted funding. That is far, far fewer than the Ministry of Justice and Legal Aid Agency had predicted in the post-LASPO period. Applications have picked up in the last year, as has the acceptance rate, but the fact remains that this safety net is sorely under-used. Continue reading
Why healthcare services have a problem with gambling
“I have a problem with gambling. There’s not enough of it.”
Dr Sean Cowlishaw, Research Fellow at the Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol
That was the admission from billionaire Steve Wynn, a major figure in the casino industry, speaking at a recent gambling research conference in (where else?) Las Vegas. And sure, it made for a good quote. But it’s also a rather glib dismissal of a serious issue that affects many thousands of people across the world.
The UK certainly has a problem with gambling. At least it has since 2007, when laws were changed to allow for huge growth in gambling opportunities and exposure. It has been hard to ignore the subsequent explosion in industry advertising, which increased by around 500% between 2007 and 2013. By contrast, you may have missed the increased numbers of high intensity electronic gambling machines, called Fixed-Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs), which now occupy the high street (within betting shops) and allow punters to wager up to £100 every 20 seconds.
Yet Britain doesn’t have much insight into its problem with gambling. Compared to most other addictive behaviours, involving drugs or alcohol for example, gambling is largely ignored by health services and public health agencies. This is partly because gambling is a hidden concern. It does not manifest with physical warning signs. Indicators are usually visible in extreme cases only, and generally following major life crises such as extreme debt or relationship breakdown. Continue reading
The 2017 General Election: first thoughts
Dr Hugh Pemberton
Reader in Contemporary British History, University of Bristol, Department of History
Writing on the morning after the election, the fog of war has lifted to reveal a battlefield on which all sides are claiming victory but nobody has actually won.
Others more prescient than me wondered before the election if it did not have a whiff of another ‘snap election’ – 1974.
It turns out they were right.
Then Ted Heath went to the country to secure a strong mandate to deal with an issue of national importance (in those days, union power) but found that he ended up with fewer not more MPs.
Ted held on in No.10 for a while but eventually Labour formed a minority government.
But the arithmetic and the politics this time are not those of 1974.
Screenshot of UK General Election 207 results, taken from BBC News website.
