Research Support Service Hub delivered by Lancaster University and Partners

This hub offers world leading expertise in designing and delivering research in:

• health inequalities and public health
• sustainability
• palliative care
• ageing
• sexuality
• neurology
• mental health
• other vulnerable people, including children and young people
• social care and social work, including with small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
• national and international clinical trials and evaluations of health care interventions.

In addition, the Liverpool Clinical Trials Centre provides expertise in:

• Neuroscience (mental health and neurology)
• paediatric and foetal health 
• women's health 
• cardiovascular
• infection
• orthopaedic
  
• surgical
• social care

Core research methods expertise

This hub provides a broad range of core research methods expertise, including:

• evidence synthesis
• bio statistics
  
• quantitative methods 
• advice on economic aspects of studies, including cost-effectiveness 
• behaviour science/ health psychology
• qualitative methods

This hub provides national leadership in the following areas of methodological expertise from across their partnership:

Methods for evaluating health and care interventions, including trials and other robust designs

• designing and delivering novel experimental approaches and innovative trials methodology research e.g Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials (COMET) Initiative
• mixed methods evaluation of complex interventions in challenging settings including realist evaluation
• health economics including public health economics, impact of behaviour change policies, econometrics, valuation of preferences and cost-analysis

Methods for determining what works, for whom, in what contexts in health and care service delivery

• theory-driven multiple method process evaluations providing explanations as to the acceptability of interventions/programmes and whether these  work in the real world, including the development of programme theory, logic models and systems approaches to inform intervention design and evaluation
• understanding and explaining the influence of context through ethnography, realist inquiry and case study and natural experiments

Co-production, participatory, creative and visual methods

Support for engaged research with underserved communities and under-researched areas, including:

• research co-production, collaboration with experts by experience as community-based researchers, and creative and visual methods including arts and design with underserved communities e.g. children and young people, people with dementia and those with cognitive difficulties.

Methods for the use of routinely collected health and care data

Harnessing data for real world health and care improvement, including:

• access to NHS data and secure data environments, data cleaning, linking and visualisation
• using data to answer NHS driven queries on health care utilisation, population health management, multimodal diagnostics and automated coding
• using administrative data to create new social care data, investigating social care use, population needs, workforce planning, and predicting costs and outcomes
• policy-relevant analysis focused on social inequalities in child health, using linked longitudinal data
• evaluation of natural policy experiments and alternative policy scenarios using state-of-the-art quasi-experimental, econometric and simulation methods to assess the health inequality impacts

This hub offers researchers a wide range of research support, including:

• formulating research questions and appropriate study designs
• facilitating multidisciplinary collaborators
• identifying and applying to appropriate funding sources
• advice on preparing grant applications and costings
  
• critical review of final draft applications
• responding to funding committee feedback
• dissemination, communications support, audience analysis, stakeholder engagement, knowledge mobilisation and community engagement
• research delivery including: 
• project management
• quality assurance and standard operating procedures
• data acquisition
• analysis and management
• ethics and regulatory approvals
• general ‘troubleshooting’ 

Do you have the right team in place to deliver your research?  Are you looking to extend and compliment your team's expertise?  This hub offers opportunities for collaboration with world-leading researchers and methodologists, including signposting to connect to wider expertise networks, to support cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research delivery.

If you would like support from this RSS Hub, please complete this form to tell us a little about yourselves and your research needs.

For general enquiries please contact nihr-rss@lancaster.ac.uk

• Liverpool Clinical Trials Centre, University of Liverpool
• MRC-NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership
• International Observatory on End of Life Care (IOELC), Lancaster University
• Centre for Health Inequalities, Lancaster University
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Unit, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust
• Health Economics at Lancaster (HEAL), Lancaster University
• Centre for Health Informatics, Computing and Statistics, Lancaster University
• Lancaster Medical School, Lancaster University
• Lancaster University Management School
• Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University
• LiLaC Public Health Research, Lancaster University and University of Liverpool
• Health Data Science, Institute of Population Health, University of Liverpool
• Public Health, Policy and Systems, Institute of Population Health, University of Liverpool
• Primary Care and Mental Health, Institute of Population Health, University of Liverpool
• Centre for Health Economics, University of Manchester
• Centre for Health Psychology, University of Manchester
• Centre for Biostatistics, University of Manchester
• Social Care and Social Work, Manchester Metropolitan University
• Social Care and Society Research Group, University of Manchester
• COMET Initiative, Institute of Population Health, University of Liverpool