The Knowledge Mobilisation champions will play a key role in supporting the translation of research into practice across health and care services in Greater Manchester. Their work will help close the gap between evidence and implementation, ensuring research has real-world impact.
In August 2025, ARC Greater Manchester (ARC-GM) welcomed six new Knowledge Mobilisation (KM) Champions.
They are health and care practitioners who aim to facilitate research evidence into improvements in care, services, and decision ‑making within a small, focussed project which is within a high priority area to their organisation that reflect real, high priority on the ground challenges
Professional background
I am an occupational therapist with a longstanding interest in improving sleep and circadian rhythm issues in people with mental health problems. I completed my PhD in 2022, focused on interventions to improve sleep in people with schizophrenia, and I have undertaken some implementation and knowledge mobilisation focused work on sleep apnoea detection in secondary care mental health settings before. I work as clinical research delivery manager in GMMH, and am very keen on improving the integration between research and clinical practice, research capacity building, and evidence use.
Why I was interested in the ARC-GM Knowledge Mobilisation Champion role
I was really excited to see this opportunity as it seems really rare to me to have the opportunituy to do work that is focused around use of evidence rather than just generation of evidence. When I have previously run sleep events targetting mental health and primary care staff they were really popular, so I was keen to offer something more in this area, knowing a lot of clinicians in my NHS Trust are intersted in this, it it seemed like I'd be pushing on an open door.
Who is your academic supervisor
Roman Kislov
Knowledge Mobilisation topic overview
I am examining how to best mobilise knowledge on sleep and circadian rhythm in GMMH services, starting with Talking Therapies, with a focus on how to assess sleep and determine what intervention or referral is most relevant.
Contact email address
sophie.faulkner@manchester.ac.uk
A little bit about me
I am an Advanced Clinical Practitioner with a strong interest in improving care for patients in their own homes. My current clinical role is within an Admission Avoidance service, where I work closely with frail patients to support care in the community and reduce unnecessary hospital admissions. I am also the Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACP) Lead within my Trust.
Professional background
I am a registered nurse with an MSc in Advanced Clinical Practice.
Why I was interested in the ARC-GM Knowledge Mobilisation Champion role
I was particularly interested in the Knowledge Mobilisation (KM) Champion role as it offers an opportunity to bridge the gap between research and clinical practice. Advanced Practice is underpinned by four pillars: clinical practice, leadership and management, education, and research. The research pillar often being the most challenging to embed within day-to-day roles.
Within Advanced Practice, the demands of service delivery can make engagement with research difficult to prioritise. KM provides a practical approach to translating evidence into meaningful change, ensuring that research is accessible, relevant, and implemented in ways that improve patient care and service delivery.
As the ACP Lead for the Trust, I am in a strong position to disseminate learning from this role across the organisation, supporting fellow Advanced Practitioners to adopt evidence-informed approaches and embed them into practice.
Who is your academic supervisor?
Prof Paul Wilson
Knowledge Mobilisation topic overview
My current focus is on Advanced Care Planning within a Proactive Care Team supporting frail, multi-morbid patients in the community. Advanced Care Planning and Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (DNAR) discussions are a key component of care across the NHS, meaning that learning from this work has the potential to inform both local and wider practice.
Working collaboratively with colleagues, I am undertaking an evidence synthesis of the published literature in this area to better understand what supports culturally responsive ACP and DNAR conversations for ethnically diverse populations. This includes exploring communication approaches, culturally appropriate patient information, and practical tools to enhance engagement, build trust, and support shared decision-making.
Contact email address
A little bit about me
I'm a Programme Lead for Healthy Hearts, working with Manchester Local Care Organisation, where I oversee the design and delivery of targeted initiatives to improve cardiovascular and diabetes outcomes across the city. My role sits at the intersection of strategy, data, and people, bringing together NHS providers, public health teams, clinicians, and VCFSE partners to co-design and embed evidence-based approaches into care pathways to reduce health inequalities, and make a real difference for underserved communities.
Professional background
I am a PRINCE2 Agile-qualified Programme Lead with a background spanning health systems, project management, and community development. Currently leading the Healthy Hearts programme in Manchester, I work across clinical, public health, and VCFSE settings to improve cardiovascular and diabetes outcomes.
Why I was interested in the ARC-GM Knowledge Mobilisation Champion role
Bridging the gap between research and practice is something I do every day, and it's the part of my work I find most meaningful. Whether I'm turning population health datasets into accessible visuals for community partners, developing business cases that translate evaluation evidence for senior leaders, or facilitating co-design sessions that bring lived experience alongside clinical insight, knowledge mobilisation is central to how I work. I was drawn to this role because it offers an opportunity to do that more deliberately and at greater scale, connecting evidence to action in a way that drives equity and improves outcomes across Greater Manchester.
Who is your academic supervisor
Professor Jo Dumville
Knowledge Mobilisation topic overview
Describing interventions for detecting hypertension among underserved populations at high risk and to support their subsequent care in the United Kingdom.
Core question - What interventions have been implemented across the United Kingdom to detect hypertension among underserved populations at high risk and to support their subsequent care.
Summary
Hypertension remains a leading modifiable risk factor for morbidity and mortality in the United Kingdom, where it is responsible for approximately 75,000 deaths annually (Fu et al., 2022; Rison et al., 2023). Despite being the most commonly reported long-term condition affecting an estimated one in three adults, it remains significantly underdiagnosed (Rison et al., 2023). Current estimates suggest that approximately 4.2 million people in England are living with undiagnosed hypertension, with individuals in socioeconomically deprived areas being 50% more likely to have an undiagnosed condition compared to those in affluent areas (Rison et al., 2023).
The NHS promotes use of routine NHS Health Check in primary care for general cardiovascular health promotion (Tanner et al., 2022), including hypertension detection and diagnosis. There are also other routine services provided in communities such as the NHS Community Pharmacy Blood Pressure Check Service. However, there is evidence that access and uptake of this is not equitable across at-risk populations (Coghill et al., 2018).
This piece of work will look at describing and mapping interventions delivered in addition to routine services to detect high blood pressure and support subsequent diagnosis and care among high-risk and underserved individuals.
Email address
I am a registered senior mental health nurse and research nurse for Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust. I have spent several years delivering inpatient and community mental health-based care, where I developed a strong commitment to patient‑centred and recovery‑oriented practice. I have recently completed a PhD study exploring community mental health workers’ experiences of care coordinating hospital discharge of patients with a diagnosis of mental illness into community integrated services in the Northwest of England.
Why was I interested in the ARC-GM Knowledge Mobilisation Champion role?
I am deeply interested in the constructivist approach to inquiry and the co-production of knowledge with health care professionals, service users, and their carers, particularly in the application to evidence-based decision-making within health and social care. I am passionate about bridging the gap between academic research and practice by promoting the integration of research evidence into everyday decision-making in planning and patient-centred care.
I was interested in ARC-GM Knowledge Mobilisation to develop my research knowledge, skills, and network. I am keen to champion research, and I wanted to role-model research capability for health care professionals in both clinical and non-clinical settings using co-production approaches
Who is your academic supervisor?
Dame Prof Nicky Cullum
Knowledge Mobilisation topic overview
“What are the reported experiences, barriers, and facilitators to patient-centred care planning among mental health workers in mental health services?”
Contact email address
I qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist from University College London in 2012 and worked in North London after graduation, moving ‘Up North’ in 2020. I enjoy hiking, good food and travel.
Professional background
After my undergraduate degree, I quickly specialised in working with adults with acquired communication and swallowing difficulties and passionately pursued further study in this area. I completed further training in ways to instrumentally assess swallowing difficulties using videofluoroscopy and flexible endoscopy, as well as delivery of specialised therapeutic interventions including LSVT Loud, surface electromyography biofeedback and McNeil Dysphagia Therapy Programme. I have always had a passion for evidence-based practice, running journal clubs, arranging training events, and leading service development projects in response to latest evidence, both as a clinician and later as a service lead. I completed a Masters in Professional Development in 2025 focusing on evidence-based service development. I currently work in a Macmillan Palliative Care and Complex Cancer Allied Health Professionals Team, which has enabled me to combine clinical skills, patient-centred care and evidence-based practice to support patients with complex needs. I have presented work at clinical excellence networks and national conferences.
Why was I interested in the Knowledge Mobilisation Champion role
Keeping up-to-date with emerging evidence and exploring ways to adopt this into practice has been a core component of my clinical work. Having recently completed a Masters in Professional Development, I was looking for a new challenge and opportunity to further develop my skills and knowledge. I have seen first-hand the benefit to patients when services can deliver effective assessments and interventions, but also the challenges services can face in doing this. The Knowledge Mobilisation Champion role therefore felt like a natural fit, I was interested in learning how to bridge the gap between academia and clinical practice and policy, both in relation to my clinical work as a speech and language therapist, and more broadly.
Who is your academic supervisor
Prof Peter Bower Peter Bower - Research Explorer The University of Manchester
Knowledge Mobilisation topic overview
We have a Research Champions Programme at WWL NHS Foundation Trust. We know that research active organisations provide better patient care, and the role of the Champions is to help embed and support a research culture in their teams. Pressures on services, mean that Champions have to work as effectively as possible to achieve this, and I hope to use Knowledge Mobilisation methodology to help develop this programme. I will explore, ‘What makes an effective research champions programme and how can a research champions programme be evaluated?’, and work within WWL and across Greater Manchester to share best practice.
Contact email address
Each KM Champion has developed with senior leaders in their organisation an important priority area where evidence may help to improve care. They refine this area into a small focussed project and complete a Rapid Evidence Synthesis by piloting the new ARC-GM RES toolkit, supported by ARC-GM researchers.
They then bring this evidence to life across their organisations through KM activities, for example:
KM Champions also evaluate their activities, helping us to learn what has works well in practice.
This approach doesn’t just disseminate evidence — it moves evidence into action.
Each KM Champion is paired with an ARC‑GM senior academic mentor to help develop ideas, build skills and make progress. Early and mid-career ARC‑GM researchers also act as research buddies to help KM Champions develop knowledge and skills vital for this role.
KM Champions meet regularly as a community of practice, giving them space to share learning, test new approaches and support each other.
They also access the ARC‑GM training offer and join the wider KM Fellows network, which provides regular development sessions, peer support and practical tools.
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