NPA’s HEF funds breakthrough research into medicines adherence

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA)’s Health Education Foundation (HEF) has funded a major study that aimed to test the SPUR tool and evaluate how effective it was at measuring medicines adherence.

The study has been published in the British Medical Journal Open.

Dr Joshua Wells, a fourth year PhD candidate at Kingston University, who was awarded the NPA bursary, was the lead researcher for the SPUR UK study, under the guidance of Professor Reem Kayyali.

Created by Observia, a health research group, SPUR is a self-assessment questionnaire which helps to detect a patient's risk of medicine non-adherence and aims to accurately articulate the reasons for health behavior.

As well as funding from HEF, the study was made possible via a partnership with Kingston University and Kingston Hospital.

HEF chair of Trustees, Dr Ian Cubbin, said: “We are delighted that NPA’s Health Education Foundation has played a part in such an important study. This research could lead ultimately to a far more personalized, tailored approach to medicines optimization – recognizing that people’s medicines behavior can be highly individual to them.”

The NPA’s HEF was established in 1989 to advance public education in the prevention and proper treatment of disease and ill-health. HEF has been successfully supporting community pharmacy practice research for thirteen years. The annual bursary aims to encourage pharmacists to undertake research in this area.