Overview

Alyson joined the Centre of Academic Primary Care (CAPC) in March 2009. Her research on health services research focuses on the aging population and supportive care for cancer.

Reducing unnecessary emergency care is one of the biggest challenges currently facing the NHS. There is considerable pressure to reduce hospital admissions amongst older people. Alyson’s previous and ongoing work has looked at primary and community health care interventions that help prevent unnecessary hospital admissions, factors of primary care that affect admissions and projects that focus on specific interventions e.g. case management in the community, medication review

Supportive care for cancer can encompass many support services including psychological support, symptom control, side effects of treatments, education, social support, rehabilitation, complementary therapies and spiritual support. Supportive care for cancer patients has been high on the Government’s agenda for the past decade. Alyson’s cancer work includes an RfPB mixed method project looking at supportive care for men with prostate cancer, and a pilot RCT of mistletoe treatment for breast cancer patients.

Background

Alyson is a graduate the University of Bath and was awarded her PhD from the Institute of Child Health (UCL) in 1996.  She has held previous appointments at the University of Leicester (1996-1999) and the University of Exeter (1999-2006).  She has contributed to several NICE guidance whilst working at the National Collaborating Centre for Women’s and children’s Health. (2006-2009). She has also worked in health care consultancy.

Involvement in other projects

Interventions for male victims of domestic violence and abuse

Measurement of fidelity in trials conducted in primary health care

Action plans for children with eczema

Methodologies

Systematic review methodology: quantitative, qualitative and mixed method analysis.  She has extensive experience of all processes involved in systematic review of the literature. Her quantitative skills include meta-analysis and sub-analysis. Her qualitative skills include thematic analysis. She has a special interest in mixed data reviews and has published an exemplar paper of synthesis of quantitative and qualitative data. [Huntley 2016]

Alyson has co-designed and leads the mistletoe for breast cancer pilot RCT.

Teaching

Society, Health & Medicine year 1 medicine

Student Selective Course (SSC) in complementary and alternative medicine Year 2 medicine 

Library SSC projects Year 2 medicine.

Other research activities

Member of National School of Primary care systematic review group

Editorial board of Maturitas and FACT 

Alyson facilitates a lunch time interest group called the Complementary and Integrative Medicine Group within Canynge hall. This brings together interested parties from both within the SSCM, the University of the West England and Bristol based interested parties. e.g. Penny Brohn Cancer Care centre

Key words

Unscheduled and emergency care

Supportive care for cancer

Complementary and integrative medicine

Systematic review methodology