GW4 Building Communities Generator Award enables researchers to expand understanding of targeted interventions for fatigue in individuals with multiple long-term health conditions.
Community Leads: Ezio Preatoni (University of Bath); Liz Coulthard (University of Bristol); Jennifer Davies (PI), Monica Busse Morris, Deborah Edward (Cardiff University); Helen Dawes (University of Exeter).
Fatigue is a ubiquitous across multiple neurological and musculoskeletal conditions and is more severe in individuals with two or more long-term conditions, sometimes known as multimorbidity. The number of people living with multiple long-term conditions is increasing, and the presence of multiple long-term conditions poses a challenge to clinicians and patients as clinical guidelines (and the underpinning research) focus on single conditions.
There is an urgent need to improve understanding and treatment of fatigue in individuals with multiple long-term conditions. At present, it is not clear which mechanistic pathways for fatigue are common across conditions and which are independent of the diagnostic label. Furthermore, it is not clear how fatigue presents across conditions, nor how best to define or measure fatigue across conditions. These factors critically impede the development and testing of targeted interventions for individuals with multiple long-term conditions.
Led by Dr Jennifer Davies, Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University, the GW4 Community Studying Fatigue in People with Multiple Long-term Conditions aimed to identify and address the key uncertainties and define the key boundaries required to deliver the long-term aim of efficient clinical trials of mechanistically informed interventions for fatigue across clinical conditions and in multiple concurrent long-term conditions.
In 2023, the community were awarded just under £20,000 in funding as part of GW4’s Building Communities Generator Award. The GW4 Building Communities Generator Fund is an open research call offering up to £20k to support collaborative research and innovation communities across the four GW4 universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter. It supports both the creation of new GW4 communities and the development of the strongest ideas emerging from our existing communities.
This award enabled the community to focus on three complementary work strands: building the community; understanding the evidence; and generating a GW4 fatigue and multi-morbidity research platform. As part of this, the community held a series of events, including a launch to create awareness of the collaboration and create a fatigue-focussed community of scholars across GW4, several thematic workshops exploring key research questions, and a symposium to cement new collaborations and summarise the research challenges identified through the activities.
The group also successfully conducted a rapid systematic scoping review to identify existing evidence on fatigue in chronic health conditions and gaps in understanding.
The main outcome that resulted from the funding was the creation of a community of individuals who all aim to develop the understanding required to inform targeted interventions for fatigue in individuals with multiple long-term conditions. The community are producing a paper to make recommendations for the field and plan to focus on funding applications to work on ideas generated through the valuable inter-institution discussions.
Dr Davies, said: “This award has also been incredibly helpful in my personal development, allowing me to lead a project with more experienced colleagues, as well as achieve the (daunting!) task of organising and leading and contributing to workshops that involve senior experts in the field. All elements of this have push me beyond my comfort zone and allowed me to develop in my academic career. I am absolutely certain that the networks and connections that have been formed will go on to do work that will advance our knowledge of fatigue.”
Our communities
The GW4 Building Communities Programme aims to build research and innovation communities of scale and capability, delivering a step change in world-class research that could not be achieved by one of the institutions alone. The Programme has two funding schemes:
- The annual Generator Fund which awards GW4 communities up to £20K for 6-month projects.
- The Development Awards which support new, and advance existing, collaborations across GW4 by funding single activities or resources with up to £5K. This is a rolling scheme, with no closing date.
More details of both schemes, and how to apply, can be found via the links above.
This award has also been incredibly helpful in my personal development, allowing me to lead a project with more experienced colleagues, as well as achieve the (daunting!) task of organising and leading and contributing to workshops that involve senior experts in the field.
All elements of this have push me beyond my comfort zone and allowed me to develop in my academic career. I am absolutely certain that the networks and connections that have been formed will go on to do work that will advance our knowledge of fatigue.”
