The Academic Centre for Healthy Ageing will put healthy ageing research, education and training into action to enable better services and outcomes for people as they grow older in north east London and beyond, under three key themes:
- preventing frailty and addressing the challenges of multi-morbidity and long-term conditions
- rehabilitation and the recovery of older people following life-changing trauma and illness
- cognition and older people’s mental health.
By placing the research centre in a hospital, within an integrated health and care system, ACHA can create a collaborative network of clinicians, researchers, educators, policymakers and, most importantly, the local community.
This presents a unique opportunity to transform how services support people as they grow older, supporting them to live well and independently, while helping reshape and grow the local health and care workforce.
ACHA will speed up health and care transformation by connecting research to frontline care. Through training and education, we will use the results of ACHA’s research to change how care is delivered. This will empower our local system to develop new roles, career pathways and most importantly health and care services that all work effectively together and evolve to meet the needs of local people and their communities as they age.
ACHA will work with care provider partners and offer front line staff the opportunity of some protected academic time working on research or education, supported by a permanent senior academic faculty and infrastructure. Employers will be reimbursed for staff time spent in these academic activities. In this way the ACHA will help to attract, retain and develop staff, particularly in posts which have previously been hard to fill.
Improving care and services for older people by
- Combining academic and clinical research expertise
- Generating real world evidence of what works
- Using the evidence to make changes to care and support services
- Developing the local workforce to implement changes
With an initial focus on evidence synthesis, leveraging local expertise and national networks to generate high quality evidence about ‘what works’ for rapid application to support and learn from local system transformation programmes.
ACHA is aiming to:
- Build a world class multidisciplinary academic workforce embedded in the local health and care system
- Generate research evidence focused on 1) preventing frailty and addressing the challenges of multi-morbidity and long-term conditions; 2) informing rehabilitation and recovery following trauma and acute illness; and 3) managing long term physical, mental and cognitive health conditions including dementia
- Build care system infrastructure to facilitate rapid translation of research findings into clinical practice, directly informing evidence-based service redesign, workforce education, training and growth
ACHA offers an exciting opportunity for Whipps Cross. By integrating academic expertise into our clinical structures, we can efficiently address local needs and set a dynamic research agenda. Together, we'll utilise the Living Lab structure to create impactful solutions for patients, healthcare workers, and the ageing population in north east London. ACHA will be the springboard for local innovation, with international impact.
Dr Mark Rawle
Consultant geriatrician and older person’s services research lead, Whipps Cross Hospital
We’re looking forward to working with the local community to understand their health priorities for older people in north east London. ACHA aims to be a step change, placing the health and wellbeing of older people at the forefront. By uniting academics, healthcare professionals, and public health colleagues, ACHA will focus on the best ways to support older people. Additionally, ACHA will develop training and dissemination initiatives to ensure research evidence is shared and embedded into practice.
Professor Steph Taylor
Professor of public health and primary care at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London
Whipps Cross is delighted to support this innovative partnership, which will contribute to improved services across our local area and to wider NHS policy and practice across the country. By working with, and listening to, diverse local communities, clinicians, and caregivers our new centre will mix innovative research with practical tools to enable better care to help all of us age more healthily.
Dr Amanjit Jhund
Chief executive, Whipps Cross Hospital
