HHTU News Roundup

Christmas closure

The Hull Health Trials Unit will be closed from 5pm Friday 19th December 2025 until 9am Monday 5^th January 2026. We will have a skeleton team to ensure safety aspects of studies are covered over this time (except weekends and the bank holidays).

All the team at HHTU wish our colleagues and collaborators a restful Christmas break and a very Happy New Year!

The DAMPen-D 2 study is greenlighted

One-third of people have delirium when they are admitted to a palliative care unit or hospice and a further one-third develop delirium during their stay. People with delirium may see or hear things that aren’t there, say or do things that are out of character, and can’t ‘think straight’. This is distressing for the person, their family, and staff. There is clear national guidance on the actions needed to prevent, detect, assess, and manage delirium. However, it is difficult for hospices to put this guidance into practice because delirium care is complex and involves lots of different people, including family, friends and health professionals. The DAMPen-Delirium 2 team have designed a way to help hospices to overcome these difficulties and follow delirium guidelines better. They have tested this on a small scale and are now running to run a major, national trial to test whether this improves delirium care and reduces delirium in hospices.

This month the first 5 DAMPen-Delirium 2 sites, out of 20, have been greenlighted with data collection to start in January.

HHTU Director at SSA Conference

The Director of the Hull Health Trials Unit is also the Co-Director of the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health Research (CAMHR) in Hull whom we closely collaborate with. Judith and many others of the CAMHR team recently attended the Society for the Study of Addiction annual conference in Newcastle. This is the UK’s foremost gathering of addiction researchers, policymakers, practitioners and experts by experience. This conference was described as an ‘amazing opportunity’, ‘an incredible couple of days’ by members of the CAMHR team and they are ‘looking forward to building on new networks and collaborations’.

Half year round up

As 2025 draws to a close, we’ve been reflecting on achievements of the last 6 months at the Hull Health Trials Unit.

We opened the IMPACT-W study, led by NIHR Doctoral Fellow Laura Hermann, exploring why women are underrepresented in research. We are also preparing two studies for early 2026: DAMPen-D II, supporting hospices to follow delirium guidelines and CONIFAS-2, a feasibility RCT of a home-based, family-led neurodiversity intervention. Our Data Services Team continues to support the recruiting Pharm-Air Qual Study.

Several key publications were released this year:

The main MABEL trial results were published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, with the Health Economics paper in BMJ Open in November.
The CANFit protocol paper appeared in BMJ Open in September.
The NEWDAY-ABC pilot results were published in Pilot and Feasibility Studies in August, ahead of a full multicentre RCT launching in 2026.
Senior Data Manager Sarah Sumper was a named author on the UKCRC guidance document Data Cleaning and Query Management.

Our Director, Judith Cohen, served on the panel for the annual Allam Lecture at Hull York Medical School, featuring keynote speaker Prof. Sir Stephen O’Rahilly.

In October, members of our Data Management team attended the UKCRC DISOG National Meeting—a valuable day of learning and collaboration, introduced by our own John Turgoose. A vendor showcase also highlighted innovations in data management systems.

Together, these achievements reflect the continued growth, dedication, and collaborative spirit of the Hull Health Trials Unit as we look ahead to 2026.