Fiona Morgan

Public Health Wales · Observatory Evidence Service

Introduction Bereavement support comes in different forms and degrees of formality, reflecting the varying needs of bereaved people. Following the Covid-19 pandemic there is renewed interest in improving the support available for bereaved people, seen in the UK Commission on Bereavement. This (pre-pandemic) Marie Curie funded study identified core...

Identifying which approaches can effectively reduce the need for out-of-home care for children is critically important. Despite the proliferation of different interventions and approaches globally, evidence summaries on this topic are limited. This study is a scoping review using a realist framework to explore what research evidence exists about re...

Purpose: What Works for Children’s Social Care has developed an “Evidence Store” to improve awareness of evidence from systematic reviews in children’s social care. During review selection, some reviews were excluded due to methodological flaws, which this paper considers. Methods: Reviews were identified using a systematic search and screening pro...

Background Bereavement support is a key component of palliative care, with different types of support recommended according to need. Previous reviews have typically focused on specialised interventions and have not considered more generic forms of support, drawing on different research methodologies. Aim To review the quantitative and qualitative...

Background: Bereavement support is a core part of palliative care. However, the evidence base is limited by a lack of consistency in the outcomes used to evaluate services and models of support, which makes it difficult to compare approaches. Core Outcome Sets (COS) represent the minimum that should be measured in research into specific conditions...

Objective Musculoskeletal care pathways are variable and inconsistent. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the evidence for the clinical and/or cost effectiveness of current care pathways for adults with hip and/or knee pain referred for specialist opinion. Design Systematic review. Data sources Electronic database searches were car...

Introduction The increasing number of children and young people entering statutory care in the UK is a significant social, health and educational priority. Development of effective approaches to safely reduce this number remains a complex but critical issue. Despite a proliferation in interventions, evidence summaries are limited. The present proto...

Introduction Bereaved adults may develop complicated grief reactions associated with mental and physical health problems and good support services are vital. This research included a systematic review and the development of a core outcome set for bereavement support service research in palliative care. The collaborative relationship (PI) with the R...

Background Bereavement support is considered an essential part of hospice provision. However, the research evidence is limited by a lack of consistency in the outcomes used to evaluate services, which in turn makes it difficult to compare approaches and draw conclusions on ‘what works best’. Core Outcome Sets (COS) represent the ‘minimum that shoul...

Background The quality of the recruitment process has a fundamental influence on the potential value of research outputs. The bereavement study aimed to develop a set of core outcomes specific to bereavement support services for bereaved adults. A consensus methodology involving all the key stakeholders (including service users) was used to address...

Background Dissemination of research results is now recognised as an important part of the research process. UK funding agencies and the Health Research Authority require that researchers have a clear plan about how findings should be reported back to patients and members of the public. Wider dissemination using a range of mechanisms specifically t...

Introduction Adults experiencing a loss might develop complicated grief reactions which is associated with mental and physical health problems. This study included a systematic review of the evidence and the development of a core outcome set for bereavement research in palliative care. Public involvement was integral throughout. The collaborative r...

Background Palliative care has an important role to play in addressing the bereavement needs of families. A small number of systematic reviews of bereavement interventions are available1 2 but these have typically been restricted to evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and provide little information on support specifically provided in...

Background Palliative care has an established role in the provision of bereavement support. However the research evidence is limited and a lack of consistency in the outcomes used to evaluate services makes it difficult to draw conclusions on their relative effectiveness. Core Outcome Sets (COS) represent the ‘minimum that should be measured and re...

Background Research suggests that there may be bereavement experiences and support needs which are specific to family caregivers providing end of life care (EoLC), although this remains an under-researched area. This paper focuses on themes relating to bereavement which were derived from an analysis of free text survey responses collected in a rese...

Background A lack of evidence-based guidance on bereavement support (Hudson et al., 2012) and of consistency in the measures used in clinical practice and research to assess bereavement outcomes (Forte et al., 2004) have been identified. The heterogeneity in outcome measures makes it difficult to assess and benchmark clinical services. It is also c...

Background Although grief is a natural process, in which most people learn to adjust without the need for formal support, the relationship between grief and poor mental and physical health is well established (Agnew et al., 2010). Research also suggests that there may be grief experiences and support needs which are specific to family members who h...

Background Palliative care has an important role to play in addressing the bereavement needs of families, although a lack of evidence-based guidance has been noted (Hudson et al., 2012; PeolcPSP 2015). A small number of systematic reviews of bereavement interventions are available, but these have typically been restricted to evidence from randomise...

Background: Musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions are the most frequently reported chronic conditions and one of the biggest causes of disability in the UK. Given the ageing population and the impact of these problems, the demand for MSK treatment will rise. Despite reduced waiting times, MSK pathways have remained variable and inconsistent and need to...

Background: Physical inactivity levels are rising worldwide with major implications for the health of the population and the prevalence of non-communicable diseases. Exercise referral schemes (ERS) continue to be a popular intervention utilised by healthcare practitioners to increase physical activity. We undertook a systematic review of views stu...

In many countries, national, regional and local inter- and intra-agency collaborations have been introduced in order to improve health outcomes. Evidence is needed on the effectiveness of locally-developed partnerships which target changes in individual health outcomes and behaviours. To evaluate the effects of interagency collaboration between loc...

NHS Evidence - oral health is one of over 30 specialist collections within the NHS Evidence library. Provided by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), NHS Evidence was launched in April 2009 with the aim of providing fast and easy access to evidence-based health and social care information.