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An evaluation of research capacity building from the Cancer Experiences Collaborative
  1. Sheila Payne1,
  2. Jane Seymour2,
  3. Gunn Grande3,
  4. Katherine Froggatt1,
  5. Alex Molassiotis3,
  6. Mari Lloyd-Williams4,
  7. Claire Foster5,
  8. Julia Addington-Hall6,
  9. Elizabeth Rolls1 and
  10. Chris Todd3
  1. 1Faculty of Health and Medicine, Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, UK
  2. 2School of Nursing, Sue Ryder Care, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  3. 3School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
  4. 4Division of Primary Care, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, Merseyside, UK
  5. 5Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
  6. 6School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
  1. Correspondence to Sheila Payne, Faculty of Health and Medicine, Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, UK; s.a.payne{at}lancaster.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjspcare-2012-000236

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    Introduction

    The National Cancer Research Institute's (NCRI) strategic review identified the need to build research capacity in UK supportive and palliative care research.1 Only 4.3% of direct spending on cancer research by NCRI partners (about £11 million per year) was being directed at supportive and palliative care, and weaknesses in the field included:

    • ▶ The predominance of small-scale and often poor quality studies with less attention to research into meeting patient's needs

    • ▶ Lack of a critical mass of experienced research groups and researchers, with international-level performance and little integration with the wider research community and other disciplines

    • ▶ Lack of user involvement

    • ▶ Lack of strong leadership, and

    • ▶ Competition for limited resources.1

    To redress these, NCRI recommended the establishment of interdisciplinary, supportive and palliative care, research collaboratives which were to include academic organisations, researchers and individuals, and groups from different research disciplines and clinical professions, whose purpose would be to enhance the value, quality and productivity of UK cancer-related supportive and palliative care research.2

    We have described the financial and personal challenges of building collaborative research more fully elsewhere.3 This paper uses an evaluative framework4 to describe Cancer Experiences Collaborative's (CECo) activities, and assess the extent to which CECo has built research capacity in supportive and palliative care. It considers the legacy of CECo in the context of the wider discussions about value of collaborative research, and offers a critical appraisal of this type of funding model.

    The Cancer Experiences Collaborative

    CECo was one of two UK interdisciplinary research groups that was awarded NCRI collaborative funding (2006–2011) of £1.9 million. It comprised a partnership between researchers at five UK universities (Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Southampton), clinical organisations (including the four largest hospices in England, and cancer centres); Help the Hospices (a leading charity supporting UK hospice care), …

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    Footnotes

    • Funding National Cancer Research Institute.

    • Competing interests The author has served on the NCRI Palliative Care Clinical Studies Group from 2008 to 2012 and the Association for Palliative Medicine Science Committee from 2005 to 2012. He is a grant holder from the following awarding bodies: Cancer Research UK, Marie Curie Cancer Care and HTA.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.