Institute of Health and Wellbeing, along with the Universities of Dundee, Glasgow, Exeter, Birmingham, Cambridge, and York has received £2.4 million from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme to assess the health and economic benefits of REACH-AF, a 12-week home exercise initiative to help people with heart failure and their carers.

Photo of doctor listening to woman's heartbeat with stethoscope

The study aims to recruit 520 patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) and their caregivers across 15 sites in England, Scotland, and Wales.

The REACH-HFpEF study will be the largest international trial of rehabilitation in HFpEF to date.

Co-chief investigator, Professor Rod Taylor from the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, said:

“We are delighted to have received this funding from NIHR to allow us to work with people with HFpEF and those that support their care and undertake this important trial. This project represents a collaboration between researchers at institutions including the Universities of Birmingham, Exeter, and York and NHS clinicians across the country.

We would like to acknowledge the support of the UK’s heart failure patient-led charity ‘Pumping Marvellous’ in securing this funding. With little or no existing evidence-based treatments, people with HFpEF have high unmet treatment need. This trial therefore represents an important opportunity to study making exercise-based rehabilitation routinely available as an effective and value for money treatment for this group, especially in a home-based format given the challenging ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Our results will hopefully inform future national and international guidelines for the management of HFpEF.”

The study is being supported by the Robertson Centre for Biostatistics and the health economics evaluation will be led by HEHTA.

Read the full press release

 

First published: 25 November 2020

<< November 2020