PARITY workpackages 2 and 3
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Mapping and Identifying Quality and Inequality in Prehabilitation for Cancer Surgery: Evidence for Improvement
IRAS ID
318939
Contact name
Clifford L Shelton
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Lancaster University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 31 days
Research summary
Prehabilitation refers to activities designed to help an individual be better prepared for a major healthcare intervention. The evidence to support its use before cancer surgery is variable and the detail of what happens to people taking part in prehabilitation needs to be better defined. Furthermore, little is known about what patients want from these services. Nevertheless, many areas of the NHS provide prehabilitation programmes. Some are run across a region, but many are limited to a particular service. Different services are available in different parts of the country. Prehabilitation has the potential to worsen health inequalities, for example, due to unequal access to facilities, transportation, and time.
The aim of this study is to produce a map and descriptive compendium of the prehabilitation services that are currently available in the UK for patients awaiting cancer surgery, according to geography, funding, commissioning and delivery. Prehabilitation service leads and providers will complete a service evaluation mapping questionnaire, which will capture data about how services are funded, who delivers them, and how they are delivered. The PARITY Study will then use this questionnaire information to select sites to carry out case studies aiming to understand how various models of prehabilitation work in practice to achieve the aims and objectives and uphold the values deemed important to stakeholders.
The primary outcome of this study is to generate rich descriptions and explanations of the ways in which prehabilitation services are designed, managed and delivered in the UK, investigate mitigators of health inequalities in service design, and develop a better understanding of the factors associated with the variation in the implementation of Prehabilitation before cancer surgery across the UK. Findings will be integrated with the PARIHS framework and used to develop actionable outputs, including feeding into a set of best practice principles.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Bradford Leeds Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/YH/0182
Date of REC Opinion
22 Aug 2023
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion