Winner
Treat to Target UK: A professional education programme to drive Treat to Target (T2T) implementation and improve outcomes for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) across the UK
Summary of work
T2T aims to improve outcomes for patients with RA and prevent irreversible joint damage through clear direction on early treatment and tight disease control. In 2011, no agreed policies existed to guide UK T2T implementation.
Since 2012, we have collaborated with the UK T2T steering committee, led by Professor Paul Emery. Gathering stakeholder insights, we designed a behaviour-change programme to ensure disease activity is monitored routinely and used to inform patient outcomes.
Using a national audit to drive realisation of the need to change, T2T recruited >1000 early RA patients; follow-up is ongoing. Beyond the audit, we evolved T2T to provide HCPs with knowledge, skills and tools to tackle the barriers to change and better implement T2T in practice.
“One of our greatest accomplishments is to achieve virtually universal acceptance of T2T, with >1000 patients recruited ... By providing important outcomes data, the audit will inform the way we treat and manage RA and achieve the best outcomes for our patients.” Professor Paul Emery, University of Leeds
T2T is now established on the UK healthcare agenda and continues to evolve RA management through a targeted multi-stakeholder approach to improve service provision and — ultimately — outcomes for patients living with this chronic condition.
Judges’ comments
This continues to be a very solid and engaging programme and it’s clear that both the agency and the client know exactly what’s required. It has become a real “rock star” programme that we would have been proud to work on. The momentum is enormous and it continues to have fantastic longevity with genuine commitment for the future.
