Now that's what I call blogging 2020: the Covid edition

Posted by Mark Welford, Fuse Communications Officer, Teesside University

It was business as usual for the Fuse blog in January 2020.  PhD student Kelly Rose told us about having sleepless nights thinking about school food and teenage diets; Coral Hanson and her co-authors channelled their inner Mr Motivator to consider whether exercise referral was fit for a new decade; and Angela Wearn asked if reaching the ‘hard-to-reach’ meant leaving traditional academia at the door?

So far so good… and then the ‘C’ word arrived and the world changed and with it the Fuse blog in the form of John Mooney’s frighteningly prescient post on the 5 February - Coronavirus: expect the unexpected in an unfolding emergency.

Last year we published posts about workplace health, tackling obesity through planning policy, the impact of commercial actors on health, food shaming, mental health, the emotional road to impact, Universal Credit, facing a Parliamentary Select Committee, inequalities, family carers of people living with dementia, International Men’s Day (yes, there is one!), and kicking Coca-Cola out of Christmas.

Our authors asked: 

• Can your education, income or even your job affect your chances of receiving newer cancer treatments? 
• Why is it so difficult to change our health habits? 
• Does antibiotic prescribing penalise communities in most need? 
• Would easy-read documents for all mean a more inclusive healthcare system? and;
• What is the recipe for a happy retirement?

But it will come as no surprise that the 2020 chart of the top five most-read Fuse blog posts is dominated by one topic: Coronavirus, Covid-19 or just plain COVID.

Here are our chart-toppers of 2020:

5. Experts by Experience challenge us to create opportunities for them to take the lead in research

First up is our only non-Covid related entry in which Angela Broadbridge and Ged Hazlehurst from the Fulfilling Lives Newcastle Gateshead project write about co-producing research with people with lived experience of multiple and complex needs.

Page views: 1727.  Posted: 15 May 2020

4. COVID-19 has brought the “digital divide” to the fore

Gemma Wilson from Northumbria University explores how a lack of access to technology and wider support networks during the pandemic is significantly heightening inequalities.

Page views: 1839.  Posted: 29 May 2020

 

3. Coronavirus: expect the unexpected in an unfolding emergency

Up next is the aforementioned post by John Mooney, Locum Consultant in Public Health at NHS Highland and one-time specialist in the epidemiology of respiratory infectious diseases. Published days after the first confirmed UK cases, John's blog was prophetic in highlighting the potential for symptomless transmission, virus instability and divergent strains.

Page views: 1909.  Posted: 5 Feb 2020

 

2. This crisis has shown how many people were only just about managing

Our runner-up is Mandy Cheetham from Northumbria University writing about her experience with a community hub delivering food parcels, prescriptions and supporting vulnerable people during the pandemic.

Page views: 2019.  Posted: 9 May 2020

 

1. Working from home isn’t for everyone - here’s how to cope if you’re struggling

"Being isolated at home can be hard; it is easy to feel cut off from friends and co-workers, to feel out of the loop when it comes to work decisions and to feel stressed with how best to work when at home."  

During the first national lockdowns imposed by the UK governments, Annabel van Griethuysen from Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, shared her tips on working from home. These include keeping a routine, eating and drinking well, having a completely separate space to work (if possible) which is tidied or hidden away at the end of the day, staying connected and reaching out to talk to your social circles if you feel anxious and stressed.

At a time when many people are again being asked to work from home it is apt that Annabel's post should take the crown as most popular blog in 2020.

Page views: 2106.  Posted: 9 April 2020

So there you have it, the top five Fuse blog posts from 2020.  All five received more page views than last year's number one, which is thanks to our loyal readers and fantastic contributors - thank you!  

Can we do any better in 2021?  If you fancy giving it a go, please find out what we are looking for and how to take part here.  All contributors receive a much sought-after Fuse badge, and the writer of the most read post wins a rare and coveted Fuse paperweight.*

Happy New Year!

*when we are allowed back in the office!

Images:

1. "Now That's What I Call Music! 1991" by Brett Jordan is licensed under CC BY 2.0
2. Courtesy of Fulfilling Lives Newcastle Gateshead: http://www.fulfillinglives-ng.org.uk

All page views correct at the time of writing.

Experts by Experience challenge us to create opportunities for them to take the lead in research

Posted by Ang Broadbridge (Research and Evaluation Lead) and Ged Hazlehurst (Expert by Experience) Fulfilling Lives Newcastle Gateshead

Earlier this year Fuse and Fulfilling Lives Newcastle Gateshead co-chaired a Quarterly Research Meeting sharing initial findings from a joint research project that explored the reasons underlying high death rates among people with multiple and complex needs (MCN). There we asked attendees to consider the findings and help shape recommendations.

Now as we write up the findings during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are reminded that drug related deaths and MCN issues have been a public health crisis long before the pandemic, though it has drawn an even sharper focus on health inequalities at this time.

The findings from the study will be available in a forthcoming end of project report but in this blog we wanted to go behind the scenes with Experts by Experience to share our experiences of co-production in public health research.

Some background

So what is Fulfilling Lives Newcastle Gateshead (FLNG), and what are Experts by Experience? FLNG is an eight-year learning programme looking to improve the lives of people with complex needs and build a trauma-informed approach within the services that support people across Newcastle and Gateshead. Experts by Experience are people with lived experience of multiple and complex needs, and have vital things to say that can help shape the future of how systems and services work for their peers.

Co-producing research

Co-production is bringing together the people using services and the people providing those services to share power and work collectively to design, develop or deliver improvements to them. This also involves seeing services and staff as agents for change and seeing people who use services as assets with skills, who in turn, gain from their contributions and move towards positive change. For example, Experts by Experience on the FLNG programme have developed training resources for Department for Work & Pensions staff raising awareness of MCN issues, which were rolled out across JobCentre Plus.

FLNG wants research to be genuinely co-produced and has invested in creating a National Vocational Qualification accredited peer research skills training package and local Peer Research Network. This is to support a shift from involvement led by professionals to an approach in which peers define the remit and research questions, leading on all aspects of the research design, delivery and dissemination.

Experts by Experience defining research problems

The beauty of the Fulfilling Lives programme has been our small team and the small caseloads; with at the most eight frontline practitioners each working full time with just 10-12 people. We work intimately with these people, building strong trusting relationships, getting to know their families, and being by their side through crisis.

Between 2014 and 2020 we worked with 267 people, during which time we experienced 27 deaths on programme. That is around 10% of the client cohort, so you can perhaps imagine the impact of that 10% on a small team who have been deeply involved in the lives of the people they have navigated through services.

We talked to our Experts by Experience Network about this and as the programme research lead I (Ang) was really wary about the sensitive subject matter and its potential for re-traumatising. My thinking was challenged when the Experts Network were really passionate about deaths in their community and told us they were already talking about it, often without much support, so not to shy away. Then they challenged us to think about how our co-production and peer research offer could dig deeper to explore this issue. We asked Experts by Experience to help us explore what it would look like for them to take a peer-led approach to this work. They really helped shape the ethics process, for example they told us to look within their Network for participants, as we could guarantee good support for people to discuss any issues that emerged out of participation. In doing so they, the Experts by Experience, identified the topic for this project.

What was the feedback from our co-produced research event? 

When we met for the Fuse QRM the purpose of the session was to study the initial findings gathered from the series of focus groups we ran exploring MCN deaths. It was interesting then that the feedback we received from the event, asking people’s views on what we found and what was surprising, clustered around co-production in research. This suggests that this research has the potential to challenge beliefs about the involvement of people with lived experience in public health research:

• People were surprised by the extent to which Experts by Experience were able to take on such a difficult subject, and;
• People were surprised by the normalisation of death within our Expert by Experience community. 

It is our hope that this acts as a springboard for more and better involvement of people with lived experience of multiple and complex needs in public health research. We have explored a sensitive and challenging subject with Experts by Experience who challenged us to create opportunities for them to take the lead. We hope that as our Peer Research Network grows, other researchers can build on the peer research model we utilised in this study to shape their own research projects.

FLNG is one of twelve programmes linked across England funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, looking to influence the system nationally. A Core Partnership of Changing Lives (lead partner), Mental Health Concern and Oasis Community Housing lead the programme’s activity, for more information visit http://www.fulfillinglives-ng.org.uk/


Images courtesy of http://www.fulfillinglives-ng.org.uk