6th UK and Ireland Implementation Science Research Conference 2023
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PRESENter
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Biography
Dr Julie Williams is a Post Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for Implementation Science. As an Occupational Therapist she has worked clinically with people using mental health services, particularly people with a serious mental illness. She completed a PhD at King’s College London in 2015. Her main research focus is improving the physical health of people using mental health services. As part of the Centre for Implementation Science she runs workshops on using Implementation Science in applied healthcare research. She has an interest in improving stakeholder engagement and involvement in research including service users and clinical staff.
background
People with severe mental illness (SMI) such as schizophrenia experience inequalities with their physical health including having more physical health comorbidities than the general population. One way to address this to provide individual support for people. Volunteers have been shown to be able to provide support and bring a valued perspective to supporting people with SMI. In this presentation we report the findings on the implementation of a feasibility hybrid trial of an intervention called ‘Health Champions’ where volunteers supported individuals with SMI with their physical health.
MEthod
The study was a feasibility randomised Hybrid II trial in which Health Champions provided one to one support for up to nine months. We assessed clinical, implementation economic effectiveness.
This presentation will focus on implementation effectiveness. To assess this, we conducted interviews with participants and Health Champions at the end of the intervention to understand their experience of the intervention and to evaluate the implementation challenges. We assessed acceptability, feasibility, appropriateness, fidelity, barriers and facilitators and unintended consequences. We used thematic analysis to analyse the data and are mapping this to the Consolidated Framework of Implementation Research (CFIR) v2 to understand the data.
results
We recruited 48 participants-27 in the intervention arm and 21 in the control arm. We interviewed 18 participants and 18 Health Champions. Overall participants and Health Champions found the intervention acceptable, feasible and appropriate. Facilitators for participants included the relationship they built with the Health Champion. Barriers included the impact of the COVID pandemic. The mapping to the CFIR will be discussed in the presentation.
Conclusion
We were able to implement the intervention and most participants and Health Champions considered it acceptable, feasible and appropriate. We have a better understanding of the implementation challenges and how these can be addressed.