{"id":5465,"date":"2021-09-01T09:20:35","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T08:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/med.st-andrews.ac.uk\/medicine\/?p=5465"},"modified":"2021-09-01T09:20:35","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T08:20:35","slug":"research-looking-at-co-creating-clear-communication-to-support-vulnerable-groups-in-the-covid-19-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/research-looking-at-co-creating-clear-communication-to-support-vulnerable-groups-in-the-covid-19-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Research looking at co-creating clear communication to support vulnerable groups in the COVID-19 pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

New research looks to understand the barriers that stop people from accessing\u00a0primary\u00a0care services.\u00a0Mara van\u00a0Beusekom, a research fellow within the School of Medicine, looked at how to co-create appropriate and clear messages\u00a0to support\u00a0vulnerable\u00a0groups in the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mara began the project at the start of lockdown\u00a0as a way to\u00a0use her time to try to make a positive change in society. The project\u00a0looked at\u00a0gaps in health communication during the pandemic.\u00a0Working with NHS Fife,\u00a0Fife Voluntary Action, Fife Council,\u00a0members of the public, health care workers and other support workers, the project asked for input from stakeholders before establishing a co-creation group to come up with solutions. For five weeks,\u00a0the research team and the\u00a0co-creation group worked step-by-step\u00a0via online meetings\u00a0to understand what made people hesitant to contact their GP\u00a0and how to overcome this.\u00a0 Findings indicated there was\u00a0an overall hesitancy to access health\u00a0services due to\u00a0uncertainty around\u00a0changes in GP\u00a0practices\u00a0during COVID-19\u00a0and\u00a0difficulties with getting appointments.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The project culminated in the development of several communication\u00a0resources\u00a0which included posters, leaflets and videos that cover everything from how to make a GP appointment to more pressing issues of people finding it difficult to share sensitive information. When speaking of the importance of the project, Mara noted that\u00a0lots of\u00a0people\u00a0aren\u2019t aware of\u00a0how much things have changed in GP\u00a0practices\u00a0in general\u00a0and the need to\u00a0reach out\u00a0to people\u00a0to\u00a0make them part of these\u00a0changes. COVID-19 has added pressure to these issues with more changes\u00a0in\u00a0how people access their GPs\u00a0and increased workloads for practices.\u00a0Overall, the importance of this project is to\u00a0support GP practices with simple\u00a0communication\u00a0tools to\u00a0encourage people to come forward\u00a0with potential health issues\u00a0and make it easier to access services.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As for the next steps,\u00a0the team\u00a0is working on evaluating the materials\u00a0with members of the public\u00a0and practices outside of\u00a0the co-creation group to see if they are acceptable\u00a0for\u00a0the\u00a0wide\u00a0range\u00a0of GP\u00a0practices.\u00a0After evaluation, Mara hopes that these materials can be made available online for widespread use.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The research team at St Andrews consisted of\u00a0Mara van\u00a0Beusekom,\u00a0Lynsey Brown, Dr Andrew\u00a0James\u00a0Williams and Dr Gozde Ozakinci.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This work is funded by Medical Research Scotland\u2019s Covid-19 Research Grants and the NHS Fife and the University of St Andrews COVID Accelerator Research Scheme.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
Visual design by Friendhood<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New research looks to understand the barriers that stop people from accessing\u00a0primary\u00a0care services.\u00a0Mara van\u00a0Beusekom, a research fellow within the School of Medicine, looked at how to co-create appropriate and clear messages\u00a0to support\u00a0vulnerable\u00a0groups in the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Mara began the project at the start of lockdown\u00a0as a way to\u00a0use her time to try to make…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":5466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[294,318,356,482,487,683,717,796],"class_list":["post-5465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pbs","category-uncategorised","tag-dr-andrew-williams","tag-dr-gozde-ozakinci","tag-dr-mara-van-beusekom","tag-fife-council","tag-fife-voluntary-action","tag-lynsey-brown","tag-medical-research-scotland","tag-nhs-fife"],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}