NIHR | Manchester Biomedical Research Centre

Case studies

Through our research, we’re making a real difference to people’s lives.

Browse the stories and case studies in this section to learn more about how we’re improving health through the work we do.

Addressing Health Inequalities – Improving treatment for common hair loss

Completed: Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Manchester BRC researchers are setting up a rapid access clinic to allow early assessment and treatment of one of the most common types of hair loss, and to better understand the condition in different populations.

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Addressing Health Inequalities – Improving asthma care by ensuring each patient is on the right treatment, at the right time

Completed: Thursday, July 28, 2022

Asthma is a common long-term lung condition. However, there is no gold standard diagnostic test for asthma. Manchester BRC researchers aimed to ensure that people from more deprived areas had the opportunity to take part in research to improve asthma care.

Continue reading full case study: Addressing Health Inequalities – Improving asthma care by ensuring each patient is on the right treatment, at the right time

Addressing Health Inequalities – Improving exercise engagement among non-English speaking people with musculoskeletal conditions

Completed: Friday, July 15, 2022

BRC researchers aim to understand the barriers to exercise and improve treatment, for people who not speak English and have musculoskeletal conditions.

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Addressing Health Inequalities – Improving breast cancer genetic testing for diverse communities

Completed: Thursday, June 2, 2022

New forms of genetic test can tell women their personal risk of developing breast cancer. However, the tests are not accurate for some groups of women from Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds. Researchers from our Cancer Prevention & Early Detection Theme are working to improve this.

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Addressing Health Inequalities – Developing new examples and descriptors for skin conditions

Completed: Friday, May 13, 2022

Skin conditions affect all skin tones, but the images used to illustrate the appearance and descriptive language used is often focused on skin of European ancestry. A new study by BRC researchers aims to improve familiarity in the presentation of skin conditions in different ancestries.

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Addressing Health Inequalities – Helping people with chronic pain to report their pain and get the treatment they need

Completed: Monday, May 9, 2022

Chronic pain affects more than 30 per cent of people worldwide. BRC Musculoskeletal Theme researchers set out to develop an easy-to-use smartphone app, that would help people with chronic pain track and report their pain, to support diagnosis and the effectiveness of treatments.

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Addressing Health Inequalities – Identifying hearing health inequalities

Completed: Friday, May 6, 2022

Hearing loss affects one in five people, impacting communication, physical and mental health. However, our BRC researchers were the first to identify that currently there is no information about whether there are hearing health inequalities among different UK ethnic communities.

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Addressing Health Inequalities – The Greater Manchester vaccine equity project

Completed: Friday, March 25, 2022

Using data from GMCR, researchers looked for differences in uptake of COVID-19 and seasonal flu vaccines between groups of people of different ethnicities in Greater Manchester.

Continue reading full case study: Addressing Health Inequalities – The Greater Manchester vaccine equity project