Make Every Contact Count More: MARS AAA screening co-design & pilot

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Enhancing Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Screening: A co-design study and feasibility evaluation aimed at reducing inequalities in uptake across Greater Manchester

  • IRAS ID

    338255

  • Contact name

    Sarah Prenton

  • Contact email

    s.prenton1@salford.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    University of Salford

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    0 years, 11 months, 30 days

  • Research summary

    The Greater Manchester and East Cheshire Aneurysm Screening Programme (GMEC-AAASP) invites 18 000 men in their 65th year every year for a 10 minute abdominal ultrasound scan to diagnose an aneurysm (swelling of the main blood vessel in the tummy). It has an overall response rate of 80% but this uptake varies from 40-98% between neighbourhoods. This work is to understand what helps and hinders people in taking-up the invitation to aneurysm screening and also to understand from service user and non user perspectives how the screening might be made to identify, and provide immediate community based support for, wider health risks beyond only the specific condition of aneurysm.

    The research has two parts. The first part is to work with service non-users (people who decline AAA invitation and/or people who are declining healthcare professional referrals to community support) and service providers (those responsible for public health delivery) to design an enhanced GMEC-AAA Screening i.e. GMEC-AAA ScreeningPlus which will better meet their needs and the needs of many more communities who have lower engagement with preventative health screening initiatives. For this, we will invite 30 people to take part in semi-structured interviews and focus groups to co-design an enhanced aneurysm screening program.

    The second part of the work is to try out the enhanced aneurysm screening programme and understand if it is possible to deliver, acceptable to service users and providers and looks likely to be effective at identifying health risk and providing personalised support in the community for those risks. We will ask upto 100 people to take part in the enhanced aneurysm screening program (designed based on input of people in phase 1) and then capture their experiences of the enhanced screening programme through questionnaires, interviews and/or focus groups.


  • REC name

    West Midlands - Solihull Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    24/WM/0154

  • Date of REC Opinion

    28 Aug 2024

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion