Centre for Adherence Research and Education (CARE)

The Centre for Adherence Research and Education (CARE) provides a research and learning hub for understanding why patients do not take their medication as prescribed (non-adherence). CARE draws on the expertise of local clinicians and researchers.

What is CARE?

30-50% of patients do not take their medicine as prescribed.  CARE aims to improve patient’s adherence by providing training to support clinicians in identifying and addressing medication challenges during their routine clinical care. CARE provides straight forward and user-friendly approaches to help patients engage with their treatment. Its management group and steering committee includes senior clinicians and researchers from across King's Health Partners.

CARE education and training opportunities for you

CARE draws on research findings to deliver education and training to staff across south east London and beyond. The Centre has developed introductory adherence training and materials for healthcare professionals to use.

With CARE Level 1 Adherence Training, you can learn practical strategies to coach patients to overcome their treatment challenges from adherence experts. With this training, you receive:

1. An Online module

A 30-minute module introducing non-adherence, examining its impact and reasons why treatments might not be taken as prescribed.

2. Face-to-face learning

A 120-minute face-to-face or live streamed workshop trains clinicians to use the Adherence Screener Questionnaire in practice, and how to respond to the medication issues they uncover. CARE trains clinicians in five key adherence support strategies, enabling them to coach their own patients to solve problems and find solutions.

3. Post-training session

A 60-minute post-training booster sessions, (online or face-to-face) giving clinicians an opportunity to ask questions and share experiences of using the questionnaire and adherence support strategies with experts from the CARE team.

Learn more information on the packages we offer.

For more information about training, please get in touch via care@kcl.ac.uk

Our online introduction to adherence issues is available for free to all King’s Health Partners staff on our Learning Hub.

CARE training evaluation

The Centre is committed to rigorously evaluating and developing our training.  Preliminary data shows that clinicians who have received training experienced a positive impact on their self-reported confidence to identify and address non-adherence issues. Our primary research strategy is to evaluate the link between CARE training, improved patient adherence and better health outcomes. This includes investigating the best way to integrate the training in existing health service pathways.

CARE research

CARE uses qualitative and quantitative research methods for a comprehensive approach to developing innovative interventions across a variety of medical conditions and treatments.

Alongside colleagues from the Clinical Practice and Medication Use Group at the King’s College London Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, we are currently researching adherence to treatment in the following conditions:

• acute coronary syndrome;
• atrial fibrillation;
• dermatological diseases;
• type 2 diabetes;
• growth hormone disease;
• heart failure;
• lupus nephritis;
• immuno-suppression post renal transplant;
• hypertension;
• gout;
• multiple morbidities in elderly care.

We also investigate adherence to non-pharmacological recommendations:

• Adherence to air pollution alerts (National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)/Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU).
• Adherence to prophylaxis for pandemic influenza.
• Adherence to recommended UV protection behavior in Xeroderma Pigmentosum (NIHR Programme).

Staff at the Centre for Adherence Research and Education produce a range of research on medication adherence. Read our recent publications. 

For more detailed information on individual staff members’ publications, please visit their pages on PURE, King's College London's Research Portal.