News
UK food insecurity interventions for families are limited and need stronger evidence
A new systematic review has found that UK interventions aimed at tackling food insecurity among children, families and pregnant women are limited in quality, scope and long-term impact. In addition, few address the full range of factors shaping whether families can reliably access healthy food. The review,…
Specialist children’s weight services need long-term investment and flexible care
Specialist NHS services for children and young people living with severe obesity need long-term investment, strong multidisciplinary teams and flexible support if they are to deliver lasting benefits, according to new research involving Sheffield Hallam University, Leeds Beckett University and the…
Trial participation may offer benefits beyond medication for autistic adults, study finds
Autistic adults could be supported to start and continue taking an antidepressant or placebo medication within the context of a randomised controlled trial (RCT), according to new research supported by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre: Bristol. Participants in both the treatment and placebo groups of the STRATA…
Open-source atlas aims to improve use of epigenetic tools in paediatric studies
Researchers at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and University of Bristol worked together to complete the first systematic review of DNA methylation profile scores (MPSs) used in children and young people. The review highlights opportunities for earlier disease research and prevention, while warning that many…
AI and saliva proteins could help improve early detection of head and neck cancer
Researchers supported by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre: Bristol have shown that artificial intelligence could help improve the early detection of head and neck cancer using saliva samples. Crucially they’ve demonstrated this can happen even when only small numbers of patient samples are available for study. In…
Review update provides go-to resource for shared-decision making questionnaires
Researchers from the UK collaborated with colleagues from the Netherlands to create an up-to-date inventory of shared-decision making (SDM) instruments. Their work is a robust instrument quality assessment and re-evaluation of progress in the field, since a seminal review published in 2018.
New study highlights how better communication can boost clinical trial recruitment
Researchers in Bristol have shown how embedding rapid qualitative research into clinical trials can help overcome recruitment challenges and strengthen study delivery, according to a new paper published in the British Journal of Pain. The evaluation was carried out within the pilot phase of the RADICAL trial,…
Improving research participation for children and young people through co-design
In this blog, Jacqueline Miller writes about how child-friendly features were embedded in the Ci2i project from the start, the philosophical approaches that underpinned this work and the factors that influenced children’s and young people’s experiences of the research. Children and young people (CYP) are increasingly included…
The benefits of using NIHR’s Be Part of Research service
In this blog Jody Salton, PhD candidate from our diet and physical activity (DPA) research theme, discusses using the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s (NIHR) Be Part of Research service to recruit participants for her study and provides a step-by-step…