The NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Kent Surrey and Sussex Knowledge Mobilisation programme focuses on building capacity and capability and mobilising evidence in response to local strategic priorities, and informing quality improvement and service transformation.
Examples of local priorities include:
- Ageing population and rising needs across all-ages.
- Mental health, together with the challenges of cost of living.
- Workforce and care delivery in rural and coastal areas.
- Access, demand, and transfers of care.
- Data informed quality improvement approaches.
The main approaches the knowledge mobilisation team are taking involve:
- Enhancing and helping to deliver initiatives, such as Integrated Neighbourhoods Care Teams, and complex patient pathways.
- Developing a framework for embedding NIHR ARC Kent, Surrey and Sussex-funded Knowledge Mobilisation Fellows into into health and social care quality improvement and service transformation teams, to support sustainability.
- Creating learning opportunities for the funded Knowledge Mobilisation Fellows to embed health equity, cultural safety and equality, diversity, and inclusion into everyday health and social care practices.
- Ensuring that health and social care is delivered equitably, utilising health equity tools, including the Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex Health Equity Framework and the Sussex Digital Inclusion Framework.
KM Projects underway in ARC Kent, Surrey and Sussex
- Workforce Transformation
Workforce transformation through continuous professional development, using the workplace itself as the primary resource for learning.
The team are developing and embedding approaches that enable staff to learn in real time, reflect on practice, and build the skills needed to better support people with learning disabilities and autistic people.
The work brings together evidence, lived experience, and frontline insight to strengthen capability, confidence, and consistency across services.
By mobilising knowledge where care actually happens, this project aims to create sustainable improvements in practice and more responsive person‑centred support.
- Improving the palliative care of people with chronic advanced liver disease
Improving the palliative care of people with chronic advanced liver disease in Brighton and Hove.
The number of people with liver disease, and deaths from liver disease, is rising nationally. Poorer people, and marginalised groups, are more likely to be affected by liver disease.
Utilsing tools that have been shown to predict a shorter life expectancy, one of the KM Fellows in ARC KSS is working with specialist liver doctors, nurses and primary care professionals, to identify people with liver disease and palliative care needs locally. They are also looking to support and implement reccomendations from The British Association for the Study of the Liver (BASL), these include:
- A multi-disciplinary team (MDT) meeting between palliative care and liver specialists - The KM Fellow is advocating for this locally, by evaluating the clinical, and cost, effectiveness of an exemplar MDT in Worthing, to support dissemination locally.
- Standardised communication of poor prognosis between secondary and primary care - An audit of hospital discharge summaries is being undeertaken to identify gaps in this process locally.
People with liver disease often have other health or social problems which make it harder to navigate the health system, for example homelessness. The KM Fellows is looking to provide training and guidance about liver disease for non-clinical homeless sector front-line workers to help people to access healthcare, along with helping primary care clinicians to improve their confidence in supporting people with liver disease by creating an e-learning module co-designed with people with lived experience of liver disease.
- Improving ovarian cancer outcomes
The Surrey NOCA implementation project to improve ovarian cancer outcomes in Surrey by identifying and addressing unwarranted variation in care, particularly for women who present as an emergency, which has been linked to a reduced likelihood of receiving any treatments.
Using a prospectively collated regional clinical database, an ARC KSS fuuded KM Fellow is conducting a detailed “system diagnosis” of the gynaecological cancer pathway to understand delays and missed opportunities for treatment.
The aim is to develop a digital dashboard with statistical process control charts to track key NOCA Quality Improvement indicators, enabling real‑time monitoring and service transformation. In parallel, this project is working with underserved communities through co‑produced interventions to raise awareness of symptoms and genetic testing, helping ensure earlier diagnosis and equitable access to care.
Together, these activities are supporting data‑driven, inclusive quality improvement across Surrey, with a view to creating a scalable model for potential national adoption.
- Improving the management of hypertensive patients
Improving the management of hypertensive patients within Kent and Medway through knowledge mobilisation aimed at clinical staff working with this population
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death world-wide and causes 1 in 4 deaths in England. The leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease is hypertension and the treatment to target rates for patients with diagnosed hypertension were 68.6% in 23/24, despite a current national target of 85%.
The ARC KSS KM teams are working with NHS Kent and Medway Sustainable Healthcare Unit (SHCU) to identify specific areas and populations with the lowest treatment to target rates, and the design and deliver education and support to their GP practices in order to help them improve their hypertension treatment to target rates.
The team are evaluating the approach, relying on quantative activty data, and data related to treatment to target rates of practices within Kent and Medway - in particular the GP practices who received specific support from the ARC KSS Knowledge Mobilisation Fellow and the SHCU team, and qualitative data from GP Prractices about the usefulness of such support.
More information
Further information can be found on the NIHR ARC Kent Surrey and Sussex web pages.
