‘Need beyond covid: Addressing the backlog for medical care in the NHS’ – research commissioning call

The UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator is putting out a research commissioning call entitled ‘Need beyond covid: Addressing the backlog for medical care in the NHS’ under its Prioritisation theme. A brief summary of the call topic is below, and more detailed information can be found here.

The UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator welcomes proposals for submissions of 1500-3000 words which review the ethical issues associated with addressing the unmet health needs in the NHS in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. We offer an honorarium of £750 for this work.

The deadline for proposals is 5pm on Friday 11 June; and the deadline for submissions is 5pm on Friday 2 July. Please email proposals/ submissions to ukpandemicethics@psych.ox.ac.uk .

Need beyond covid: Addressing the backlog for medical care in the NHS
The management of the coronavirus pandemic has required wide-ranging changes to the provision of healthcare, including significant delays to non-urgent treatment. Indeed, modelling suggests that from March 2020- February 2021, the UK saw 46,000 excess deaths as a result of changes made to emergency care and adult social care in response to the pandemic. As mass vaccination enables us to progress from the emergency stage of the pandemic and to consider the long-term management of covid-19, The UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator is proposing to commission research concerning the ethics of addressing the backlog of unmet care needs in the NHS in the wake of the pandemic. Such research may include an assessment of likely unmet care needs (in both physical and mental health), and whether existing ethical frameworks are well suited to prioritisation in the post-pandemic context. Looking further ahead, such research might also address ethical issues in securing a healthcare workforce that will be sufficient to meet demand in the UK after the pandemic.

If you are a researcher interested in submitting a proposal for this work and have any questions, please contact Dr. Jonathan Pugh at: jonathan.pugh@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

A PDF containing more detailed information can be downloaded here.