Asthma Working Partnership
Asthma UK and the British Thoracic Society (BTS)

The BTS and Asthma UK have a shared objective in seeking to improve the health care of people with respiratory disease.

Research priorities in Asthma
At a Medicine and Me meeting on Asthma at the Royal Society of Medicine in August 2004, Professor Stephen Holgate (AIR Division, Southampton General Hospital and member of the British Thoracic Society) and Philippa Major (then Assistant Research Director Asthma UK) expressed enthusiasm to Dr John Scadding (Associate Dean RSM and co-convener of the James Lind Alliance) about establishing a James Lind Alliance (JLA) Working Partnership in Asthma.

Following a series of meetings, plans were drawn up to populate the Database of Effects of Uncertainties of Treatments (DUETs) with Asthma Treatment Uncertainties, and then develop methods for prioritising these uncertainties into a short list of 20 – 30. The final step would be a workshop at which members of Asthma UK and the British Thoracic Society (BTS) would agree their top ten shared priorities from the short list. The full workshop report can be accesed here [PDF 379kb] .

Description of a workshop to set priorities for treatment uncertainty research in Asthma, March 2007. click here [PDF 397 kb]

Observation report of the Asthma Workshop produced by Ruth Stewart, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London. click here [PDF 484 kb]

Priority setting approaches for James Lind Alliance Working Partnerships, to see paper (click here PDF 212kb)

Patient Power
In the first of a series of three articles exploring the growing enthusiasm for patients getting involved in saying how the medical world could work better for them, Sophie Petit-Zeman follows a group of doctors and asthma patients seeking to agree on research priorities. To see the full article click on the link below.
http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,2082971,00.html

Asthma UK is a charity dedicated to improving the health and well-being of the 5.2 million people in the UK who have asthma. They work with people with asthma, healthcare professionals and researchers to develop and share expertise to help people increase their understanding and reduce the effect of asthma on their lives.

The BTS aims to improve the care of people with respiratory disease:- improvements in standards of care; education, training and research; advancement of public education and health promotion.

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