What is the positive change that has emerged through new collaborations or partnerships during Covid-19 that your project is going to embed?

Improved collaboration between the independent contractor groups is beginning to occur to address the reduced care provision arising from the impacts of Covid-19. These improvements include a recognition of the importance of data sharing and collaborative working.

Dental problems, particularly in children, have considerable impacts. Not least there are educational impacts through reduced school attendance which have life long implications for social inequalities. The determinants of the problem are common to many other chronic diseases, for example diabetes, obesity and cancers all of which present in later life. Using widely available dental data on both service access and disease levels, the opportunity to address the determinants through improved collaborative working would impact on both overall health levels and inequalities.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The key objective of the project is to understand how individuals, particularly children currently access all independent contractor services, other community based services and the associated factors. This understanding would provide the basis for the development of programmes to support all care workers for appropriate signposting for care for the public and helping reduce fragmentation to provide timely and efficient interventions.

How will the project be delivered?

The proposed programme would be delivered using the developing integrated care systems and support arrangements that the authors have within the region and the university. It will utilise the extensive network of expertise that has been built up within primary care but specifically focus on the how utilisation of the data can provide the framework for understanding and supporting meeting the needs of patients. Central to this is to provide data on exactly what contacts children have with primary care based services, whether social or health.

How is your project going to share learning?

The outcomes of the work would be published in a range of journals. In addition, the work would form part of the wider agenda on collaboration that the authors are working on in supporting better working practices to reduce inequalities.