Funding award for Clinical Research Group as part of the national Mental Health Research Network

Posted on 7 May 2013

Dr Liz Hughes has been awarded a grant to convene a Sexual Health and Mental Health Clinical Research Group.

Dr Liz Hughes (senior lecturer in Mental Health and lead for Physical and Sexual Health in the Mental Health and Addicitons Research Group) has been awarded a grant to convene a Clinical Research Group as part of the national Mental Health Research Network. The aim of the CRGs is to gather together a set of collaborators (academics, clinicians and public and patient involvement) to identify key research priorties for a specific topic and develop proposals for funding through the NIHR. CRGs run for two years and expected to submit at least two grant proposals. The group of collaborators include Professor Simon Gilbody and Dr Shehzad Ali from the MHARG, as well as Dr Fabiola Martin from Biology Department. External collaborators include senior academics service user representatives and clinicians representing Psychiatry, Sexual Health, Mental Health nursing and Health Psychology from UCL, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, and City University. Liz also has international collaborations in relation to the development of this work from Columbia University, USA.

In this round, only three groups were funded nationally and ours is the only one in the region. In addition, Liz is currently the only mental health nurse to lead such a group, and only the second nurse ever to do so. The other nurse to do this was Professor Dave Richards (formerly of the University of York, now University of Exeter). The topic for this group is Sexual Health and Mental Health and this will potentially develop research related to lifestyle and sexual behaviour, improving quality of imtimate relationships and reducing intimate partner violence and exploitation, as well as physical issues such as sexual side-effects of medication and prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases and blood borne viruses. Liz is working with the North East MHRN hub to organise a service user and carer consultation day to identify areas of need in relation to sexual health and relationships from the service user perspective. This work has evolved from a C2D2 grant that was awarded to Liz and colleagues from Biology (Dr Fabiola Martin) to undertake a systematic review of global prevalence of BBV in this group of service users

Notes to editors:

For more information visit our mental health and addiction research group web pages.