Health Services Delivery

The Health Services Delivery research theme focuses on optimising the management, delivery and evaluation of safe and effective healthcare to ensure that services relating to health promotion, disease prevention, diagnosis and management are evidence-based and delivered across transitions of care within the health system. An integrated, interdisciplinary approach that is focused around the needs and expectations of people in their communities is a key focus of our Health Services Delivery theme. To this end, the theme comprises of a collaborative network of research active interdisciplinary and inter-faculty academics and healthcare practitioners focused on building clinical and research collaborations to enhance health services delivery. We will build on existing strengths including:

People-centred and integrated health services across the life span

In this focus area, researchers are exploring innovative methods regarding the development and delivery of care pathways that are planned around people needs and choices, to support them to live well in their own homes and communities.

Implementation science

This focus area examines methods to optimise the systematic uptake of evidence-based, technology-enhanced interventions into practice and policy.

Future activity within HSD theme

Health service delivery faces increasing public demands for access to and use of new technologies, new medications and new models of care, as well as higher expectations of quality and safe care (WHO 2020). Future activity under the HSD theme will explore optimal methods of health care delivery to meet these demands in a timely and coordinated way.

 

Theme Lead – Audrey Tierney

Professor Audrey Tierney  is an Associate Professor and Discipline Lead in Human Nutrition and Dietetics in the School of Allied Health, University of Limerick. Her main research interests include evaluating a whole of diet approach based on the traditional Cretan Mediterranean Diet and its effects on metabolic health (Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Heart Disease) and Implementation Science and translating nutrition and dietetic evidence base to sustainable practices. Professor Tierney’s nutrition and dietetic clinical and research expertise is in the nutritional management of Cystic Fibrosis.

Current Active Research Projects include:

  • Chief Investigator on the project ‘MEDINA’ – MEDIterranean diet in Non Alcoholic fatty liver disease (RCT), a multicentre randomised controlled study in 4 hepatology clinics in metropolitan hospitals in Melbourne, Australia investigating the effects of a Mediterranean versus a Low Fat diet on insulin resistance and liver specific outcomes in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease.
  • Co-Investigator on ‘AUSMED’ – The AUStralian MEDiterranean Diet Heart Trial (RCT), a      multicentre randomised controlled trial to investigate the effects of a Mediterranean versus a Low Fat diet on the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease.
  • Chief Investigator on a project entitled ‘MEDRA’ – Mediterranean Diet in Rheumatoid Arthritis
  • Chief Investigator on a HRB funded project investigating the diet and disease associations in Cystic Fibrosis