The recipients of the 2017 Health Education Foundation awards have been announced, with a research project looking at facilitating consultations between pharmacists and men affected by unipolar depression among the successful proposals.

The HEF, which is part of the National Pharmacy Association, supports pharmacists to undertake practice research. The awards of up to £10,000 each were made, with the recipients being: 

• Sarah Brydges, a postgraduate research student and community pharmacist in Hertfordshire, for ‘Working Backwards, developing and modelling a complex intervention pilot service to facilitate healthcare consultations between the community pharmacist and males treating unipolar depression to better support their care’
• Fin McCaul, a community pharmacist in Manchester, for ‘Delivering structured education for people with diabetes in community pharmacies – The Pharmacy Managed Patient Peers Empowerment in Diabetes Study (PharMaPPed)’
• Adam Abbasi, a community pharmacist in Nottingham, for ‘A participatory action research study to explore the impact of the community outreach Medicines Use Review (MUR) intervention targeting patients who are medically underserved’.

Ian Cubbin, chairman of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, said: “It is a great pleasure to be able to make these awards. Like all of our recipients, the successful applicants in 2017 have submitted innovative research projects focused on delivering better patient outcomes.

“The Foundation was established to advance public education in the prevention and treatment of disease and ill health and has been awarding bursaries and hardship funds since 2010. As a charity we rely on donations from the sector and the public to continue our work and we look forward to receiving future applications from interested pharmacists.”