Research Fellow in the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration for Greater Manchester (Mental Health Theme)

We wish to appoint a Research Fellow to join the Mental Health Research Theme within the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration for Greater Manchester, based at the University of Manchester. This position offers the opportunity to contribute to the development, evaluation, and implementation of new initiatives to protect, sustain and improve mental health and resilience in local communities, marginalised populations, and patient groups. Our research focus is on children and young people, but we also study the integration of physical and mental health systems and interventions with adults.

The key purpose of this post is to contribute to this large, complex Mental Health Research Theme of ARC-GM working across three work streams, engaging with academic and research staff, clinicians, third sector organisations, health and social care service users and their families, education, and other relevant organisations. The successful post holder will be expected to coordinate and deliver projects within the work streams including systematic reviews, PPIE activities and qualitative and/or quantitative studies to time, target and budget. The post holder will be expected to ensure effective regulatory, financial, and human resources procedures are in place to deliver the work. This will involve extensive liaison with the project team and collaborators.

The Mental Health Research Theme has 3 core work streams:

Prevention: Our priority is the promotion, protection and enhancement of Children and Young People’s mental health. A critical step in mental health promotion is to understand the mental health literacy, needs and help-seeking behaviours of upcoming generations. In this work stream we will convene a young person’s public and patient involvement and engagement panel and work with NHS, social care, third sector and educational partners across GM to explore mental health literacy in CYP. We will use surveys, routinely collected data and qualitative work to identify at-risk groups and target improvement. We will synthesise evidence to identify the acceptability, impact, and sustainability of digital and non-digital platforms for community mental health promotion and co-produce a coherent framework for CYP mental health promotion.

Access: Access remains a fundamental driver of effective mental health services. We will complement our prevention and promotion research, with research-led improvements for those who subsequently seek help by:
a) mapping existing models of access across different service contexts and life-stages and assess their impact on current organisational and service-level performance indicators, patient engagement, experience and outcomes;
b) synthesising this knowledge with economic and demographic data to model the implications of current approaches to service organisation;
c) integrating new and existing knowledge to develop, evaluate and disseminate a comprehensive set of care pathways, with evidence-based quality standards and access improvement guidance. We will evaluate different models of mental health care access and map these to care in GM. We will locate access within a stakeholder-derived definition of parity of esteem and co-design and implement evidence-based audit and feedback mechanisms to drive improvement.

Integration: Long-standing deficits in the physical healthcare of people with mental illness contribute to substantial health inequalities. We will extend our work on prevention and access to facilitate integrated and holistic care for those in contact with mental health services by:
a) developing and implementing audit/feedback mechanisms to drive service-level improvements in mental and physical health;
b) co-producing and evaluating patient-led initiatives to stimulate user-led demand for physical health services;
c) improving the availability, accessibility and experience of physical health care for people with enduring mental illness.

The School/Department is strongly committed to promoting equality and diversity, including the Athena SWAN charter for gender equality in higher education. The School/Department holds a Silver Award which recognises their good practice in relation to gender; including flexible working arrangements, family-friendly policies, and support to allow staff achieve a good work-life balance. We particularly welcome applications from women for this post. All appointment will be made on merit. For further information, please visit:    https://www.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/about/equality/  

Our University is positive about flexible working – you can find out more here

Blended working arrangements may be considered

Please note that we are unable to respond to enquiries, accept CVs or applications from Recruitment Agencies.

Enquiries about the vacancy, shortlisting and interviews:

Name: Prof Karina Lovell

Email: karina.lovell@manchester.ac.uk ​​​​​​​

General enquiries:

Email: People.recruitment@manchester.ac.uk

Technical support:

https://jobseekersupport.jobtrain.co.uk/support/home

This vacancy will close for applications at midnight on the closing date.​​​​​​​

Please see the link below for the Further Particulars document which contains the person specification criteria.