Improving primary care services for imprisoned women with severe mental illness (IP-SIS) Protocol Paper

Roden-Lui, Gloria; Chew-Graham, Carolyn A.; Hard, Jake; Harriott, Paula; King, Hannah; Mastrocola, Emma; Walker, Tammi

Abstract

Background
A gap exists in the provision of care for imprisoned women with Severe Mental Illness (SMI), both in prison and on release to mainstream primary care. Women in such settings tend to have complex mental health problems, often with comorbid long-term physical health conditions (LTCs). These problems are compounded in women who are racially minoritised. The prison regime can be a barrier to addressing health needs of women: limited time out of cell and depletion of staff resources. Little is known about how imprisoned women with SMI use prison primary care services, to what extent services meet health care needs, and how services are experienced by different ethnic groups.

Aims
1.
To explore the range of primary care services delivered to imprisoned women with severe mental illness (SMI) in England and describe what is working well and the barriers to accessing care.

2.
To develop a framework for use in women’s prison services to support the primary care of racially minoritised women with SMI.

Methods
The proposed study comprises of three phases across female prisons in England. Purposive sampling will be used to capture different prison groupings.

Phase 1: Semi-structured telephone/online interviews with prison primary care practitioners.

Phase 2: Focus groups / one to one dicussions with imprisoned women with SMI, including women from a range of ethnic groups.

Phase 3: Consensus groups with prison healthcare and non-clinical staff

Patient and Public Involvement (PPIE)
Co-applicant PH will be the PPIE lead, as a lived experience researcher, who supports engagement with imprisoned communities and PPIE in research. She will recruit and facilitate meetings with an ethnically diverse Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAG), supporting members to participate in the Research Steering Group (RSG) that monitors study progress. She will be supported by Co-applicant HK who has expertise in supporting PPIE in engagement and participation in research.

Citation

Roden-Lui, G., Chew-Graham, C. A., Hard, J., Harriott, P., King, H., Mastrocola, E., & Walker, T. Improving primary care services for imprisoned women with severe mental illness (IP-SIS) Protocol Paper

• Other Type: Protocol
• Online Publication Date: Feb 28, 2025
• Deposit Date: Apr 24, 2025
• Pages: 14
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3310/nihropenres.13753.1
• Public URL: https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/1199600
• Additional Information: Referee status: Approved with reservations, Approved with reservations; Referee Report: 10.3310/nihropenres.14940.r34848, Roland Jones, University of Toronto, Toronto, 26 Mar 2025, version 1, 2 approved with reservations; Referee Report: 10.3310/nihropenres.14940.r35038, Emily Glorney, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, England, 14 Apr 2025, version 1, 2 approved with reservations; Grant Information: This project is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) under its [‘Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) Programme (Grant Reference Number NIHR206780) Improving Services for Imprisoned Women with Severe Mental Illness (IP-SIS).]. CCG is part-funded by National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) West Midlands Applied Research Collaboration (ARC WM)The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.; Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.