Sexual Health Improvement for Population and Patients HIT review of 2014-15

Professor John Macleod, Director of the Sexual Health Improvement for Population and Patients Health Integration Team (SHIPP HIT), gives an update on their work in 2014-15.

The Sexual
Health Improvement for Population and Patients (SHIPP) HIT works to promote
evidence based sexual health improvement. We won bids to the NIHR Health
Protection Research Unit and NIHR CLAHRC West to pilot centralised
telephone-based management of chlamydia and gonorrhoea diagnosed in the
community. This is being evaluated in 11 south Bristol practices.

Reducing late
HIV diagnosis is a priority for SHIPP and we will submit an application to the
NIHR Research for Patient Benefit programme. The audit project underpinning some of
our work in this area was ‘highly commended’ at the 2015 annual conference of
the British HIV Association. We have audited the PPI
practice of sexual health services across Bristol, helping to ensure that patients’
views inform commissioning. This work has been presented at the NIHR INVOLVE
conference.

Bristol City
Council is updating the sexual health element of their Joint Strategic Needs
Assessment to inform their commissioning strategy. In Bristol, North Somerset
and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) we are in the possibly unique position of having
detailed independent local population based data on sexual health, collected as
part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children – also known as
Children of the 90s. Using local data to inform commissioning of local services
is an important part of our impact.

Gene Feder and
his team at the University of Bristol are looking at how primary care staff can
recognise and respond to intimate partner violence. This work was one of 10 ‘impact
case studies’ submitted by the School of Social and Community Medicine to the
2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF). The REF panel of independent experts
judged this work as world leading. Funding from the Wellcome Trust and the
Elizabeth Blackwell Institute has supported adaptation of this intervention in
sexual health care settings. Funding from NIHR CLAHRC West will see it extended
to other sites.

Patrick
Horner’s work on non-gonococcal urethritis (NGU) and
Mycoplasma genitalium has led to changes in the way this condition is treated in sexual health
departments across BNSSG. He
has submitted a proposal to the NIHR Health Services and Delivery research
programme to pilot a ‘same day one stop shop’ HIV and sexually transmitted
infection testing service, aimed at harder to reach men who have sex with men. Economic
evaluation of chlamydia and gonorrhoea point of care testing in men with
symptoms of NGU attending the Bristol Sexual Health Centre will be completed this
summer.

SHIPP’s work
has also informed the evidence summary supporting chlamydia screening produced
by Public Health England, which is published on the National Chlamydia
Screening Programme website.