Making research travel: Our first two Impact Launchpad pilots

The pilot solutions 

The Impact Launchpad will be starting with two pioneering pilots: 

Dementia awareness for South Asian communities

Dementia awareness is low in South Asian communities due to cultural stigma, language barriers, and a lack of culturally appropriate services, leading to late diagnoses and less access to support.

Led by Dr Faiza Durrani (QMUL), this pilot will bring a dementia education toolkit into South Asian community settings. The toolkit is designed using concepts of cooking and recipes as analogies to explain how things like genetic diseases and risk factors work in dementia. Using formats like recipes, animations, and hands-on activities, trained facilitators will help people talk about dementia, reduce stigma, and feel more confident making choices. 

Storysharing® in Care Homes 

Communication barriers in care homes, such as language differences, disabilities, and changes in staff, can foster feelings of isolation and diminish residents’ sense of agency, connection, and relationships.

Led by Dr Nicola Grove (UEL), this pilot uses structured storytelling to help older adults, people with disabilities, and staff share stories together. The approach was first developed with people with profound and multiple disabilities where communication is especially challenging. Using the principles of universal design, we are exploring how the approach can be adapted for care homes to strengthen relationships, enhance communication, and support people to express identity and autonomy.

Our launch session

The journey of ideas from research is usually influenced and shaped at various points by commissioners, funders, citizens, regulators, and practitioners (among others), but rarely do these individuals have the opportunity to come together and have a conversation. 

In our session, participants were invited to step into different roles: from researchers and commissioners to practitioners and citizens: and debate how a fictional innovation might make its way to being implemented in real-world care. The exercise surfaced the kinds of tensions, trade-offs, and decisions that shape whether promising ideas survive the journey from research into practice. Through these conversations, groups were challenged to come up with agreements that would satisfy the priorities and address the concerns of all stakeholders involved – and ultimately create the conditions for the research to be implemented in a real world setting. 

Some of the learnings that came up in the session included:

• Start small, with scale in mind

Early trials are most useful when they test ideas in a contained setting and generate learning. But it’s equally important to signal how those lessons might be built on and scaled, so stakeholders that might influence the implementation of the research can see a path forward.

• Begin from a shared problem

In the session, the team that was able to implement the research were able to do one key thing – outlining what they agreed on first. The stakeholders involved in bringing an idea from research to implementation can have different (and sometimes competing) priorities. Starting from agreement on the “why” can make it easier to navigate differences in the “how.”

• Research that anticipates questions

Through the discussions we noticed that it isn’t enough to prove an idea works. Researchers that were able to anticipate the kinds of concerns different stakeholders would raise (costs, risks, equity, or practicalities) and take steps to address them were more successful in bringing their research into the real world setting.

• Inclusive engagement early and often

Getting a mix of commissioners, practitioners, citizens and others around the table early on brings in perspectives that might otherwise be missed. Additionally, engagement shouldn’t be a one-off. Reconnecting at key points helps keep people aligned and momentum going.

• Plan for the realities of practice

Implementation challenges like limited staff time, funding cycles, regulatory requirements can stall even the most promising ideas. Factoring these into the design and testing phases helps innovations move from theory into sustainable practice

What’s next for the Impact Launchpad?

Over the coming months, we will be working with Dr. Nicola Grove and Dr. Faiza Durrani to test and adapt their pilots in social care and community settings. This work will run till February 2026, and we will share updates along the way through a series of blog posts.

In the spirit of learning from the discussions at our launch session, we want to make this process as open and inclusive as possible. If you’re interested in following along or contributing perspectives from your own experience, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with LSV’s Partnerships Manager, Gemma Ashwin, by clicking here.

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