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The ACER study officially began in October 2021. The research team, including the Project Manager and Research Assistants, were recruited during the first few months of 2022.
In June 2022, the study was approved by the North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 2 Research Ethics Committee (reference number 22/NE/0067), and we immediately started to recruit participants to Components 1 and 3.
Due to delays with recruiting participants to Components 1 and 3, we requested for a 15-month extension to the study. This extension was granted during the summer of 2023, and this extended the end date for the ACER study from 31st March 2025 to 30th June 2026. This means that we could extend our participant recrtuiment for Components 1 and 3 until the end of May 2024. We are currently on track to achieve our recruitment target (560 overall, 400 in the NHS and 160 in the independent sector).
Once we finish recruiting for Components 1 and 3, we will start recrtuiting participants to Component 2, and aim to finish this in the autumn of 2024.
We will finish collecting data for Component 3 by the end of 2025, as this is when our final 18-month follow-up will be due.
We are currently working on obtaining the data for Component 4, and should have findings to share from this part of the study in the summer of 2024.
We will update this page to share findings from our results as and when they are ready, including links to open access publications. Findings from Component 1 should be ready towards the end of 2024, and our final results should be ready in the summer of 2026.
