VISION 2020 UK Astbury Award 2016: Nomination Form
Nominations are taken from VISION 2020 UK member organisations. However nominees do not necessarily have to work in, or be trustees or volunteers of, the organisation.
Nominees can be an individual, organisation, or for a specific eye health programme or piece of work. The award can also be in recognition of a whole career in which fostering collaboration has been a significant theme.
Name of nominee (if this is a team list all participants below):
The College of Optometrists
Michael Bowen, Director of Research, , 020 7766 4373
Twitter: @CollegeOptomUK
Name of specific piece of work:
PrOVIDe: the Prevalence of Visual Impairment in the Dementia population (an NIHR funded project)
How does your nominee exemplify excellence in collaboration?500 words max.
PrOVIDe combined a myriad of organisations to investigate the prevalence of visual impairment in people with dementia and potential barriers to eye care. It was characterised by collaboration from start to finish.
PrOVIDe began through conversations between the College of Optometrists, Alzheimer’s Society and Thomas Pocklington Trust. A Steering Group was created before the start of the project that included optometric, ophthalmological, neurological and statistical expertise, and a former dementia carer. The Steering Group met throughout the project and represented a multi-disciplinary approach.
PrOVIDe undertook eye examinations with over 700 people with dementia, roughly half in care homes and half in their own homes, requiring close working partnerships with the Dementia and Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Network (DeNDRoN), who recruited the patients, and The Outside Clinic (a national domiciliary optometry company), which undertook the examinations.
Collaboration allowed The Outside Clinic’s pre-existing appointment and examination data collection systems to gel with DeNDRoN’srecruiting needs, while our Steering Group’s patient perspective made all the public-facing project materials suitable for this population.
These competing needs - of recruiters, a national company and a research project -required adapting our processes, and the resulting successful collaboration allowed us to reach our recruitment target and gather more in-depth information about this population’s eye health than ever before.
We involved significantly more people living in care homes than in previous research. This involved the Enabling Research in Care Homes (ENRICH) programme, but also direct contact with care home managers by project staff. By once again going further to enable collaboration with willing but busy managers we were able to identify the significant difference in prevalence of visual impairment in the care home population.
The dissemination of the project findings has represented further collaboration. As well as integrating the findings into College training events for optometrists, we have presented to health researchers, neurologists, ophthalmologists, patients and carers, other health professionals and at an international dementia conference. The project findings will help to break down barriers between morbidities and increase patient-centred care, ensuring that quality of life is considered equally for this patient group as compared to others.
In addition, two new collaborative projects sprang from PrOVIDe. The Visual Impairment and Dementia Summit, held in February 2015 and organised by the College, Alzheimer’s and Pocklington, brought together people with dementia and visual impairment, carers, eye health and dementia clinicians, representatives from charities and researchers to discuss priorities for research that would be of most use to people with both conditions.
From this came our Dementia: Which Test is Best project,undertaken jointly with University College London’s Dementia Research Centre. Patients with the Posterior Cortical Atrophy form of dementia underwent tests with an optometrist, ophthalmologist and neurologist to explore which vision tests were most useful for patient and practitioner.
The PrOVIDe project report was published in July this year and will be disseminated widely. From planning to promotion and project spin-off, PrOVIDe has been a success because of its collaboration and its adaptability in allowing that collaboration to happen.
Nominator: Martin Cordiner
Head of Research
The College of Optometrists
Tel: 020 7766 4346
@CollegeOptomUK
Organisation: The College of Optometrists
Nomination forms should be sent via e-mail to
Please include all the requested contact details on the nomination form (don’t forget your Twitter handle if you tweet) along with a photograph.
The closing date for nominations is Friday August 12th. The winner will be notified in August and the award is due to be presented at an event at The Federation of (Ophthalmic and Dispensing) Opticians in London, on Monday 19th September.
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