Month: September 2021

Covid 19

Current awareness updates

Covid-19 Loneliness Fund evaluation.
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; 2021.
[The Covid-19 Loneliness Fund was launched in May 2020 to support 9 national organisations working to tackle loneliness and build social connections to help them to continue and adapt their critical work during the pandemic. The National Centre for Social Research was appointed as evaluator for this fund. This report presents the results of a process evaluation of the fund, to see how it supported the delivery and adaption of services aimed at addressing loneliness during Covid-19 restrictions.]

Annual Organ Donation and Transplantation Data for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities: report for 2020/2021.
NHS Blood and Transplant; 2021.
[This report provides information related to organ donation and transplantation within the white and Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities in the UK. It finds the Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the numbers of living donor kidney transplants that could be performed. In 2020/21 there was a comparable drop in both white and non-white deceased donors, but a 61 per cent decrease in the number of BAME living donors, compared with a 58 per cent drop overall.]

Association of the COVID-19 lockdown with smoking, drinking and attempts to quit in England: an analysis of 2019–20 data.
Addiction; 2021.
[Following the March 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, smokers and high-risk drinkers in England were more likely than before lockdown to report trying to quit smoking or reduce alcohol consumption and rates of smoking cessation and use of remote cessation support were higher. However, high-risk drinking prevalence increased post-lockdown and use of evidence-based support for alcohol reduction by high-risk drinkers decreased with no compensatory increase in use of remote support.]

Public Health

Current awareness updates

Alcohol and self-harm: A qualitative study.
Alcohol Change UK; 2021.
[This study explores how and why alcohol and self-harm are related, and how alcohol, self-harm, and related services, are experienced and understood. Eleven people who had experience with self-harm and alcohol use were recruited through mental health support organisations across England and Wales. Interviews invited participants to ‘tell their stories’ about self-harm, alcohol use, the relationship between the two practices and their experiences with services in relation to these.]

Chronic kidney disease: assessment and management.
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE); 2021.
[This guideline covers care and treatment for people with, or at risk of, chronic kidney disease (CKD). It aims to prevent or delay the progression, and reduce the risk of complications and cardiovascular disease. It also covers managing anaemia and hyperphosphataemia associated with chronic kidney disease.]

Bonded By Blood: A Mothers Story.
ACLT; 2021.
[A new nationwide blood donation campaign, created by a group of Black health charities and community organisations with support from NHS Blood and Transplant, the campaign will focus on amplifying the need for more blood donors of Black heritage to donate. It is launched in memory of sickle cell patient Richard Okorogheye. The campaign will share the stories of mothers with children who receive regular blood transfusions.]

Good Childhood Report 2021.
The Children’s Society; 2021.
[Our Good Childhood Report 2021 shows that modern life continues to erode the happiness of young people. Dissatisfied with school, friendships and how they look, children deserve drastic change. Our tenth annual report finds that 7% of 10 to 15 year-olds (an estimated 306,000 children) in the UK are not happy with their lives.]

The health impacts of Sure Start.
Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS); 2021.
[This briefing note from the Institute for Fiscal Studies extends the evidence from its previous 2019 report to show how Sure Start has influenced children’s health. Specifically it assesses the programme’s impact on hospitalisations of very young children, who are still eligible to use its services (ages 1-4), and of adolescents (ages 12-15), who may still enjoy medium-term benefits from Sure Start exposure.]

Building Connections Fund evaluation final reports.
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; 2021.
[The £11.5 million Building Connections Fund (BCF) was the first ever government fund dedicated to tackling loneliness in England. There are two separate reports for this evaluation: part one, the evaluation report, which covers findings before the Covid-19 pandemic; and part two, focusing on the evaluation activity following the Covid-19 pandemic.]

Public Libraries

September Reading for Health Book of the Month: How to cope: the welcoming approach to life’s challenges by Dr. Claire Hayes

‘Life can be demanding enough without us causing ourselves greater upset because we “don’t feel happy”. Instead, let’s welcome all our feelings of distress, all our thoughts and beliefs about life’s challenges, and focus on transforming these in a way that is helpful for us.’

In How to Cope, psychologist and clinical director of depression awareness charity Aware Dr Claire Hayes takes a good look at our thoughts and how they can affect us, demonstrating how each of us can use cognitive behavioural principles to help us cope. In a very clear, practical way she shows us how to make sense of our distressing feelings, to become aware of our unhelpful thoughts and our core beliefs, and most of all, to focus on what we can actually do to improve things for ourselves. Rather than trying to suppress or ignore negative thoughts and feelings of distress, she invites us to welcome them as messengers asking us to do something helpful to improve things.

Using her unique techniques such as the ‘Coping Triangle’ and ‘Coping Sentences’, Dr Hayes shows us how to proactively manage life’s challenges, such as pressure, rejection, loss, failure, success and change. Real-life case studies illustrate the success of Dr Hayes’s approach, while practical exercises and advice make it accessible to all readers. How to Cope is the ideal book is for anyone who has suffered from stress, anxiety or depression, and for their friends and family.

The book is currently available for free on the Borrow Box app as an eBook and eAudiobook. It is one of the public library’s always available titles, so it means that you won’t have to queue to borrow the book – just download it instantly. To access this, you will just need a Lancashire Library card (you can apply here if you don’t already have one) and download the Borrow Box app for free from the Google Play or App Store. Alternatively, you could also reserve a physical copy from one of the reopened libraries.

Resource of the Month

The Cochrane Library

The Cochrane Library is a collection of high-quality independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making.

The Cochrane library promotes evidence-informed health decision-making by producing high-quality, relevant, accessible systematic reviews and other synthesized research evidence.

Their work is internationally recognised as the benchmark for high-quality information about the effectiveness of health care and is generally known as the ‘Gold Standard’ for systematic reviews.

Access the library here. For help with this please email the library team: academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk

Please feel free to download our resource of the month poster and share with your team or within your department.