Dr Claire Sexton, who is part-funded by the NIHR Oxford Health BRC, has won an Early Career Researcher award in this year’s Vice-Chancellor’s Public Engagement with Research Awards.

The awards celebrate public engagement work across the University, and last year’s winners include Dr Liz Tunbridge, our training theme lead.

The award win was announced at a ceremony at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on 28 June, hosted by Vice-Chancellor Professor Louise Richardson.

Dr Sexton, who is a researcher at the Oxford University Department of Psychiatry, said; “I am delighted to be awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Public Engagement with Research award.

My public engagement work aims to increase awareness about dementia and how healthy brain ageing can be encouraged through non-pharmacological means, which is my particular research focus. Public engagement activities are crucial to bringing research findings in this area to wider audiences, and it’s fantastic for this work to be valued by the University.”

Dr Sexton has worked to engage the public with her research on healthy ageing – she is the Founding Chair of the Dementia Friendly Chipping Norton, and she has worked with the ‘Dementia Friends’ initiative, giving public talks and information sessions about her research to over 900 people, and organising film screenings of the documentary “The Age of Champions”. The Dementia Friendly Chipping Norton group aims to bring together people living with dementia, caregivers, community organisations and researchers to increase awareness of dementia locally and improve inclusion and quality of life.

Dr Sexton has also built capacity for public engagement, encouraging, training and enabling other researchers at Oxford to take part.

The Vice-Chancellor’s Public Engagement with Research Awards recognise and reward those at the University who undertake high-quality engagement activities and have contributed to building capacity in this area. Dr Sexton was one of five Early Career Researcher winners at the awards.

Watch Dr Sexton deliver a presentation on her research and outreach:

Professor Louise Richardson, Vice-Chancellor says: “I have been deeply impressed by the quality of the public engagement with research projects submitted for this year’s awards. The breadth and diversity of the activities taking place show how seriously the University takes its commitment to public engagement. It is inspiring to see the positive impact these activities have both on research and on the individuals and communities that have been involved, from warriors in Tanzania and young adults in Brazil, to local communities affected by dementia.”

Professor Alison Woollard, the University’s Academic Champion for Public Engagement with Research says: “Public engagement enriches both research and society and the University is committed to enabling our researchers to inspire, consult and collaborate with the public. I’m delighted that we are able to recognise and highlight the fantastic work our researchers are doing and hope these awards encourage more colleagues across the University to carry out their own public engagement with research.”

Dr Sexton is funded by: The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) based at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust and University of Oxford, the NIHR Oxford Health BRC, Oxford Alzheimer’s Research Trust Network.

Theme leads, Professors Clare Mackay and Simon Lovestone, reveal details of the world’s biggest and most in-depth studies into dementia on BBC Radio 4’s World at One. Known as the ‘Deep and Frequent Phenotyping Study’, it is hoped that the broad range of tests on people in their middle ages will open up paths to early diagnosis and offer clues to effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease before major damage to the brain has been done.

Reporter, Andrew Bomford, visits Older Adults and Dementia theme lead, Professor Mackay, at one of the NIHR Oxford Health BRC’s core facilities – the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity (OHBA) (pictured above) – to look in on an MRI scan. It is one of the wide range of tests that is part of the study. Listen to his report for BBC Radio 4’s World at One, 26 June 2017:

The Deep and Frequent Phenotyping Study is going to do every one of these tests that anybody has ever explored. We’re going to see if any one of them measures change before people have symptoms, and then we’re going to combine them using big data analytics.” Professor Simon Lovestone, Informatics / Digital Health theme lead

In a follow-up report on 27 June 2017 for the World at One, Professor Clare Mackay talks about the big data approach, and Professor Simon Lovestone considers what has been the greatest obstacle to progress so far. Is it our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease, the drugs, or the clinical trials?

Listen to the second report by Andrew Bomford for BBC Radio 4’s World at One, 27 June 2017:

In a cartoon version you’d imagine that people go all the way through their lives performing at a particular level, and then they just start to decline very gradually when they reach a particular age. This is people who would go on to develop disease. And that very early stage of that, the gradient is very, very shallow, so we need really sensitive measures to be able to pick it up.” Professor Clare Mackay

“It might be that everything that we’ve learnt about Alzheimer’s disease is wrong? I don’t think that’s the case. It might be that everything that we know about Alzheimer’s disease is right, it’s just that the drugs are not very good? I don’t think that’s the case either. Or it might be that what we know about Alzheimer’s disease is right, and some of the drugs we’ve developed might work, but the clinical trials are not good enough? I think that’s the case.” Professor Simon Lovestone

The Deep and Frequent Phenotyping Study is a multi-site study, led by Professor Simon Lovestone at the University of Oxford, and is funded by the MRC and NIHR as part of Dementias Platform UK – a UK-wide infrastructure network designed to support large, multicentre studies into dementia.

Read the related BBC Health online article – ‘Spotting the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s‘.

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, partners with the University of Oxford in the NIHR Oxford Health BRC, recruited 1,908 people to 36 studies supported by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network in the 2016/17 financial year.

During the previous year, the trust recruited  1,812 people to 29 studies, making it second in the table of 224 NHS organisations which ranks trusts by the number of people recruited.

Among the trust’s studies is a trial exploring how to lower smoking rates in people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

People with mental illnesses are far more likely to smoke: they consume 42% of tobacco in England, and 53% of those with schizophrenia and 48% with bipolar disorder die of smoking-related illnesses.

The Smoking Cessation Intervention for severe Mental Ill Health Trial (SCIMITAR+) is comparing routine GP support for stopping smoking, with a new programme of one-to-one support in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

The intervention involved Oxford Health referring their patients to 8 to 12 weekly, 30 to 45-minute sessions with a mental health practitioner, helping them to quit by tackling issues such as coping with cravings and setting a new routine.

Patients could also get prescriptions for Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) from GPs during the trial, which closed to new participants in December.

Participants were compared to the usual NHS stop smoking services, which involves GP support and NRT, but with no one-to-one support. Their progress was checked with questionnaires and carbon monoxide breath tests.

Christina Cusack (pictured left), the study’s lead Research Assistant, said:

Quitting smoking can help patients improve their physical health as well as mental health through increased self-confidence and reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms. Smoking also increases metabolism, meaning that medications need to be prescribed at higher doses to achieve a therapeutic effect and quitting may mean service users are able to reduce doses of psychiatric medications. This study has helped us identify that it is difficult to demonstrate the importance of smoking cessation to mental health professionals, as many feel service users have a lot going on as it is and quitting smoking isn’t most important to them. I think the trial will also add to the already growing recognition by mental health services that physical health is a big concern and needs to be addressed as well as mental health needs.”

Participant Sarah, who has bipolar disorder, said:

I had been smoking since I was 12 years old, and at the height of my addiction, I was smoking 20-30 a day. It almost seemed like I lived and died to smoke. I was smoking very much with my mental health problems and this had to come to an end. The Buckingham resident, 51, said: “When it did come to an end, I struggled a lot, but it has helped having the visits and also the carbon monoxide tests. We decided on the best way to help me quit smoking and the strength of the patches and inhaler. This went on until I realised I didn’t want to use patches anymore. I have now given up smoking, which has been a huge benefit to me. My mental health has improved. I think it’s just taken the dependency on cigarettes away, which has made me feel much better.”

The study was supported by the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) Thames Valley and South Midlands, an NHS-funded body which works to ensure research can take place in the health service. It was funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme.

Professor John Geddes, Director of Research and Development at Oxford Health and Director of the NIHR Oxford Health BRC said:

We are delighted to be one of the trusts doing the most to make sure that mental health research is at the forefront in the NHS. Our researchers work with NHS patients to make progress in topics ranging from dementia to eating disorders to schizophrenia.”