Work is well underway at the Leeds Academic Health Partnership (LAHP), one of the biggest partnerships of its kind in the UK.  Established to improve the health and wellbeing of the people of Leeds by helping drive innovation through collaboration, our partners include three of the city's universities, our health and care organisations and the City Council. That means we have world class expertise at our fingertips.
 
Since our inception, our membership has grown to include associate member Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network and affiliate members St Gemma's Hospice, Yorkshire Cancer Research and Leeds City College.

Together we're creating the environment where great ideas are being transformed into life-changing initiatives for the people of Leeds and beyond. 

For the full list of LAHP partner and member organisations, see here.

In our first blog, Steph Roberts, Manager of the Leeds Centre for Personalised Medicine and Health, explains what personalised medicine is and why is it crucial in helping to achieve the urgently needed transformation in health and care.  

People in Leeds can look forward to seeing their health care increasingly become more personalised now that we have established the Leeds Centre for Personalised Medicine and Health.  

Using cutting edge approaches, personalised medicine and health moves away from a 'one size fits all' approach to more tailored treatment and care for each citizen. It holds the key to transforming the quality of clinical outcomes for citzens, to their experiences of health and care and to improving the efficiency of services. 

A new partnership in Leeds has been agreed to evaluate the benefits of a diagnostic blood test which can help predict whether someone is likely to develop type 2 diabetes. 

The Leeds Centre for Personalised Medicine and Health will be working with SomaLogic to explore how to assess the effectiveness of the test through a number of clinical studies across the city. 

In an unprecedented approach, we're developing 'one Leeds workforce' across the health and care sector.

The establishment of our new Leeds Health and Care Academy will bring together the planning, coordination, resource and delivery of learning and development for around 57,000 Leeds health and care professionals, offering them greater opportunities to experience and practise in different workplace settings and disciplines.
 
By involving our universities, we will position the Academy at the forefront of digitally-enabled learning with a curriculum which will be based on world-leading evidence and research. 

One of our affiliate members Yorkshire Cancer Research is investing £5.2 million in a programme to target lung cancer in Leeds – the largest single investment funded by the charity, and the third largest study of its kind in the world.

The trial is set to test 7,000 people for the disease and will focus on smokers and ex-smokers aged 55-80. 
This part of a wider Yorkshire Cancer Research investment of at least £100 million to reduce the number of cancer deaths across the region by 2,000 a year by 2025.

Carrying out successful life-saving trials such as this  is critically dependent upon building collaborative strategic partnerships with the NHS, public health professionals, local authorities and our leading universities. We're proud to have helped Yorkshire Cancer Research with this collaboration to support delivery of the trial. 

A collaboration of NHS, care and local government organisations in Yorkshire and Humber has bid for Local Health and Care Integrated Record Exemplar (LHCRE) status.

The LHCRE programme has been launched by NHS England to raise the bar in how the NHS and its partners can share data to help deliver better care for citizens and patients.

It aims to create an information sharing environment that helps health and care services continually improve the treatments we use, ensures that care is tailored to the needs of each individual and can empower people to look after themselves better and make informed choices about their own health and care.

A new film outlining the LAHP strategy explains the challenges, opportunities and priorities to drive health and care innovation in Leeds and beyond.

The LAHP's priority areas of work include tackling childhood obesity, mental ill health in children and young people, cardiovascular disease, co-morbidity – where physical and mental ill health commonly exacerbate each other – frailty, and end of life care. 

Watch the five minute film by clicking on the 'READ' link below.