Optimising Targeted Delivery Of Mental Health And Lifelong Well Being Interventions In Scotland

"People living in Scotland are more likely to have mental-health problems, long-term illnesses or die early than people living in the rest of the UK or most of Europe. Much of this ill health is preventable and is linked to unhealthy lifestyles, for example there are high rates of smoking, drinking alcohol, drug abuse and unhealthy eating habits. This means that Scotland is a good base for research aiming to improve health and wellbeing, because there is a lot of room for health improvement, and a lot of people could benefit.

This funding would build a Scotland-wide network of university based researchers, senior health service managers and members of the public to develop a programme of applications for research funding which would aim to support health improvement in Scotland. The proposed research will design, develop and assess community pharmacy services, aiming to promote life long health and wellbeing. This research is important because the pharmacist's role has expanded recently, in part, to allow people to use a greater range of health services without going to their GP or hospital. In Scotland new pharmacy services include minor illness schemes, stop smoking services, and services to improve medicine use. Services such as drug abuse services, screening for drinking problems, weight management programmes, and blood pressure monitoring are available in some areas, depending on local needs. Many of these community-pharmacy led services are new and few have been properly researched.

The network will build a centre of health service/pharmacy practice research at the Strathclyde Institute for Pharmacy and Biological Sciences (Glasgow), one of the UK?s best pharmacy research centres. This funding would create a unique national working relationship between all of Scotland's pharmacy practice research teams as well as building research links with other related subject areas such as health economics, statistics, psychology and medical sociology. This will introduce new methods to pharmacy practice research. This will make it likely that the research designed by the network will be funded in the future and potentially increase the impact of the research on health outcomes in Scotland and internationally.

The network would conduct six workshops to build research links, develop a research plan, and prepare research funding applications. This research would benefit [1] patients, by improving services [2] health service managers, who could design research to help them make decisions [3] the general public, by making the best use of money spent on healthcare."