HRB invests in UCC research to address national health and social care priorities

18 Dec 2023

Three researchers at UCC’s College of Medicine and Health have received significant funding to address national health and social care priorities for those who need them most.

• HRB invests in UCC research to address national health and social care priorities.
• The projects will address challenges in speech and language interventions for children, breastfeeding supports and climate-resilient healthcare systems.
• UCC researchers will lead to a step change in practice and policy to deliver outcomes for the health system, population health or for service users and carers.

A programme to educate and prepare healthcare professionals for climate change resilient and sustainable healthcare systems, a programme to ensure that interventions to support children’s language and communication deliver maximum benefit and an interdisciplinary programme of research the first of its kind in Ireland to prioritise breastfeeding as an important societal health need have been awarded funding from the Health Research Board’s Applied Programme Awards.

Deirdre Bennett, Professor in Medical Education and Head, Medical Education Unit, UCC: Educating Healthcare Professionals for Climate Change Resilient and Sustainable Healthcare Systems has received €2,475,908 in funding.

This research programme aims to identify exactly what skills healthcare professionals need to develop in relation to climate change and sustainability, examine the best methods for integrating these topics into professional development and explore the unique impact of the Irish healthcare system as a context for learning. Climate change and sustainability is a relatively new area of learning for healthcare professionals. Evidence is lacking about what needs to be learned and how it is best learned. This hinders healthcare professionals and those who educate, employ and regulate them in addressing learning needs.

This project aims to address this gap.  Professor Bennett says healthcare systems must respond urgently to the challenges of climate change and move towards more sustainable ways of delivering care.

“Our vision is that climate awareness and sustainability become integral in the everyday work of healthcare professionals, informing clinical decision-making, conversations with patients and continual improvement of practice. Education is key to realising this vision.  We will identify exactly what skills healthcare professionals need to develop in relation to climate change and sustainability, examine the best methods for integrating these topics into professional development and explore the unique impact of the Irish healthcare system as a context for learning.

“The World Health Organisation has described climate change as the greatest threat to health of the 21st century. There are millions of avoidable deaths annually from climate and pollution-related health issues. Healthcare also contributes to the problem, producing 4-5% of global greenhouse gases.  Our strategy involves developing, implementing, and evaluating educational programmes for healthcare students and professionals, fostering collaborative learning across different professions”, said Professor Bennett who is leading this initiative.

This research programme she said “is a crucial step toward preparing healthcare professionals to actively contribute to resolving the planetary crisis. The outcome will be a healthcare system that is not only more responsive to climate challenges but also a contributor to broader sustainability goals, benefiting patients and the planet alike.”

Dr Pauline Frizelle, Senior Lecturer, School of Clinical Therapies, UCC: Maximising the benefits of intervention research to support language and communication in children has received €2,493,765 in research funding to ensure that interventions to support children’s language and communication deliver maximum benefit. Ten percent of children have persisting problems with language and communication which significantly affect their education, relationships and wellbeing and this number rises to 40% in children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.

While research shows that lots of treatments are effective Dr. Frizelle explains there are significant barriers preventing practitioners from using them in a way which brings the most benefit.

Key barriers are  the inconsistent and imprecise intervention descriptions, incomplete details about which children receive interventions and significant variability in the outcome measures of language and communication used. These inconsistencies mean it is not possible to compare or combine studies. Comparing and combining allows researchers to identify what makes a treatment more efficient, who they work for, and how much treatment is needed to see change in outcomes which are important to children and families.

Through a series of connected studies, this programme of research has taken an international approach in developing priorities and agreement to address these key barriers across seven countries. The work will culminate in a set of internationally agreed common standards of language intervention reporting, which will 

• accelerate discovery by enabling meta-analysis and international collaboration
• increase intervention efficiency by accelerating translation of research into practice
• increase equity by reflecting the perspectives of stakeholders.

Dr Pauline Frizelle, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University College Cork and the lead applicant commented: 

“This work has the potential to dramatically change the field of paediatric language and communication intervention across the world, and consequently improve the lives of all children with persisting problems learning their first language.”

Prof. Patricia Leahy-Warren, Head of School of Nursing & Midwifery, UCC: Maximise support for breastfeeding for sustainable population health and wellbeing: Integrated knowledge translation approach, MaxSBF has received €2,445,580 in funding.

This interdisciplinary programme of research is the first of its kind in Ireland to prioritise breastfeeding as an important societal health need. Despite well-established evidence on the value of breastfeeding in enhancing the health and wellbeing of current and future generations, breastfeeding rates in Ireland are the lowest of OECD countries. Improving this is a key public health priority.

An international team, led by the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University College Cork, aim to bridge the gap between the evidence on the value of breastfeeding and the implementation of effective and sustainable changes needed to make breastfeeding the easiest choice for women. The team will work to understand and positively influence a cultural shift towards valuing breastfeeding as the biologically normal way of caring for infants.

The team will adopt a 3600 approach to shift the focus away from pressure on individual women, and towards addressing government policy, legal protections, health systems, communities and workplaces, social and cultural attitudes, familial support, health professional education and skilled breastfeeding support for women.

This groundbreaking project aims to elevate the importance of breastfeeding as a key public health issue and influence sustainable population-level change to benefit the health and wellbeing of the nation. It has the potential to have wide-reaching impact not just across the island of Ireland but beyond, through sharing and translating knowledge on how to tackle a perpetual public health issue of global importance.

According to Patricia Leahy-Warren, Professor of Nursing and Chair of Health Services Research at University College Cork and the lead applicant on the project: “breastfeeding is proven to be important for the health and development of every generation, yet breastfeeding rates in Ireland remain stubbornly low. This interdisciplinary project seeks to make choosing, and continuing, to breastfeed as easy as possible for women in Ireland.”

Dr Mairéad O’Driscoll, HRB Chief Executive, said: “The Applied Programme Awards are designed to ensure that knowledge generated from the research can be quickly put into policy and/or practice. The successful projects in this scheme are carefully aligned with the aims of not only the HRB Strategy, but also wider Department of Health and EU research priorities. We were delighted to receive additional support from the Department of Health to increase the number of projects we could fund and many of the successful awards address evidence gaps identified in the Department’s Statement of Research Priorities. It was also particularly pleasing to see that many of the awards built on previous HRB-funded work, which indicates a coherence among our combined efforts to maximise the impact of Ireland’s health research investments.”

Professor Helen Whelton, Head of College of Medicine and Health, congratulated the researchers on securing this highly competitive funding, enabling them to collaborate with health services. “These programmes exemplify the vast potential of the academic-service partnership fostered by an Academic Health Sciences System. Supported by the HRB Applied Programme Awards, they aim to benefit the health and welfare of patients and the public by applying new scientific knowledge, enhancing services and improving patient outcomes in the targeted communities.”

Professor John Cryan, UCC Vice President for Research and Innovation said: Congratulations to our three UCC researchers that have received of a HRB Applied Programme award. These projects align to the UCC Futures thematic areas of Sustainability, Future Medicines and Children, and will address and enhance critical health care challenges in Ireland. I look forward to seeing these projects rapidly implemented into policy and practice in the Irish healthcare system."