Co-designing Dietary Weight Management in Spinal Cord Injury

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  A co-design project to develop, and assess the acceptability and feasibility of, an intervention to support prevention of weight gain and/or encourage weight reduction in people with Spinal Cord Injury within Specialist Spinal Injury Centres

• IRAS ID

  329354

• Contact name

  Carolyn Taylor

• Contact email

  Carolyn.taylor1@nhs.net

• Sponsor organisation

  Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

• Duration of Study in the UK

  2 years, 8 months, 31 days

• Research summary

  Background
  There are over 50,000 people in the UK living with a Spinal Cord Injury (SCI), and 1,500 people having SCI each year. SCI is life changing, resulting in paralysis. To begin with an SCI will cause a loss of muscle but later it changes to weight gain and increased fat. This increases the risk of obesity-related diseases more than people without a SCI.
  Research question
  Is it possible to co-design a suitable weight management intervention for people with SCI?
  Aims and Objectives
  To develop and check if people living with an SCI find a new weight management programme useful and suitable for them. We want to:
  • Co-design a weight management programme with patients and health care professionals that we will provide from the spinal centre for people in the hospital and when they go home
  • Develop a training package for staff in Specialist Spinal Injury Centres to help them provide the programme
  • Check if the programme can be successfully delivered
  Methods
  The study consists of two parts.
  Using Hawkins et al’s three-stage framework for co-designing interventions:
  Stage 1. Evidence base and stakeholder consultation
  a. Find out about current weight management services at UK Specialist Spinal Injury
  Centres
  b. 20-36 staff and patient interviews to find out what they think is important for weight management following SCI
  Stage 2. Co-production
  c. 4 workshops involving patients and staff will review the information found and talk about what an ideal weight management programme might look like
  d. Design a model weight management programme through discussion and making changes

  Stage 3. Prototyping
  e. Test the intervention with 5-7 patients
  f. Interview staff and patients involved to find out what they found good and bad about the programme
  Working with key stakeholders, a future evaluation will be designed

• REC name

  London - Dulwich Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  25/LO/0535

• Date of REC Opinion

  22 Aug 2025

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion