Adwoa Parker
NIHR Advanced Fellow and Associate Professor

Profile

Biography

Adwoa Parker (née Hughes-Morley) is an NIHR Advanced Fellow and Associate Professor. She leads the Trial Forge Studies Within A Trial (SWAT) Centre, which is focused on improving the efficiency of trials using ‘Studies Within A Trial’ (SWATs), which are self-contained studies embedded within an ongoing trial that aim to establish evidence to improve the management and delivery of trials.

Adwoa’s Advanced Fellowship, ‘IMPLEMENT SWATs’, funded from 2022-2032, aims to use implementation science and SWATs to improve evidence-informed participant recruitment and retention in trials.

From 2012-2016 Adwoa held an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship that explored methods to develop and evaluate interventions to improve participant recruitment into mental health trials.

She was the co-investigator on PROMETHEUS, which was a major national programme of research funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) from 2018-2021 to facilitate the routine embedding of a recruitment or retention SWAT in ongoing randomised controlled trials.

Adwoa is currently a co-investigator on ACTIVE, which aims to investigate the clinical and cost-effectiveness of internal plate fixation versus external fine wire fixation for the management of Type C, closed pilon fractures of the distal tibia.

She has led on TRIALISt, which aimed to develop a training programme for staff to improve recruitment into RCTs.

Adwoa was previously Public Involvement Lead for the York hub of the NIHR Research Design Service Yorkshire and Humber.  The RDS has now been replaced by the NIHR Research Support Service

Adwoa is happy to supervise MSc and PhD students and welcomes enquiries from potential students on projects in her areas of interest (for her areas of interest, please go to her Research page).

Qualifications

• PhD Medicine (University of Manchester)
• PGCert Primary Care Mental Health (University of York)
• BSc (Hons) Health Sciences (University of York)

Departmental roles

• Lead, Trial Forge SWATs Centre
• Member of the Department of Health Sciences’ Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee

Research

Overview

Adwoa has research interests in the following clinical and methodological areas:

• Randomised controlled trials
• Recruitment and retention of participants into trials
• Reducing research waste
• Studies Within A Trial (SWAT)
• Implementation science
• Patient and public involvement in research
• Qualitative research in the context of trials
• Mental health

Projects

• Articular Pilon Fracture Trial (ACTIVE): External frame versus internal locking plate for articular pilon fracture fixation.
• IMPLEMENT SWATs: Using IMPLEMENTation science and Studies Within A Trial to improve evidence-informed participant recruitment and retention in randomised controlled trials
• PROMETHEUS: PROMoting THE USE of SWATs: Routinely embedding recruitment and retention interventions within randomised trials.
• Trial Forge Studies Within A Trial (SWAT) Centre

Completed projects

• Connect project: Co-Production of Policing Evidence, Research and Training: Focus Mental Health.
• Pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions for non-respiratory sleep disturbances in children with neurodevelopmental disorders: a systematic review
• TRaining to Improve pArticipant recruitment into randomised controLled trIalS (TRIALISt)

Research group(s)

• Trials and Statistics

Publications

Selected publications

Adwoa’s top five highly cited papers (with over 100 citations each) are:

1. Impact of patient and public involvement on enrolment and retention in clinical trials: systematic review and meta-analysis
2. Clinical effectiveness of collaborative care for depression in UK primary care (CADET): cluster randomised controlled trial
3. Trial forge guidance 1: what is a study within a trial (SWAT)?
4. Factors affecting recruitment into depression trials: systematic review, meta-synthesis and conceptual framework
5. Overcoming barriers to recruiting ethnic minorities to mental health research: a typology of recruitment strategies

Full publications list

• Adwoa Parker's publications

External activities

Overview

Memberships

• Research Design Service, Yorkshire and Humber
• National Institute of Health Research Trial Managers' Network
• MRC-NIHR Trial Methodology Partnership Recruitment Working Group
• Trial Forge

Editorial duties

• Studies Within A Trial (SWAT) Collection Advisor, F1000 Research

Invited talks and conferences

• Parker, A. (2019). Reducing research waste: how Studies Within a Trial (SWATs) can improve the evidence base for doing trials better. NIHR Head office, Southampton
• Treweek, S., & Parker, A. (2018). Study Within A Trial (SWAT) to increase the evidence base for trial recruitment and retention decision making. UK Trial Managers Network Annual Meeting, London
• Parker, A., (2017). Quantitative Research Methods and the NIHR Research Design Service. Newcastle Hospital
• Hughes-Morley, A., (2016). Connect project, systematic review research stream: an overview. Police Knowledge Fund Workshop, University of York
• Torgerson, D.J., and Hughes-Morley, A., (2016). The need to undertake embedded recruitment and retention trials. University of Oxford Hughes-Morley, A., (2016). Trials, recruitment and mental health. University of York
• Hughes-Morley, A., (2016). Publishing as a PhD Student. The University of York
• Hughes-Morley, A., (2015). Improving trial recruitment by developing an evidence base. Grünenthal GmBH, Aachen, Germany
• Hughes-Morley, A., (2015). Factors affecting recruitment into depression trials: systematic review and meta-synthesis of qualitative evidence. University of Manchester. Qualitative Synthesis Network
• Hughes-Morley, A., (2014). Recruiting to mental health trials: how can we make it evidence-based? 8th Annual Optimizing Clinical Trials Summit. Barcelona, Spain. Allan Lloyds
• Hughes-Morley, A., (2013). What are effective methods to recruit research participants into mental health trials? The University of Liverpool
• Hughes-Morley, A., (2013). What are effective methods to recruit research participants into mental health trials? The University of Manchester