UKPRP Funded Consortia & Networks

ActEarly aims to improve the life chances of children by focusing on improving the environments that influence their health. Three themes will be examined: (i) on healthy places, considering the environments in which children live and attend school, and examining how these could increase physical activity, reduce obesity, and improve mental wellbeing, for example; (ii) healthy learning, focussing on how learning is linked to place and community interactions that facilitate learning; and (iii) healthy livelihoods, considering what is good for children’s learning and social engagement. The research will extend the applicant’s work in Bradford and include Tower Hamlets in London, two ethnically diverse areas of the UK with high levels of child poverty. The two sites are intended to enable testing of the replicability of research approaches and generalisability of interventions.

The consortium’s overall approach is to evaluate the cumulative effect of multiple system-wide interventions on improving children health. Co-production of interventions with users and local communities will be informed by evidence synthesis and will follow citizen science methods and asset-based community development approaches. Policy simulation modelling will be conducted to assess the long-term impacts of interventions, and data sources include longitudinal data from the Born in Bradford cohort.

For more information visit the ActEarly website or follow them on Twitter: @ActEarlyCities.

SIPHER’s vision is a shift from health policy to healthy public policy. This means all policy sectors working together to tackle health inequalities and improve the health and wellbeing of the public.

The conditions in which we are born, grow, live, work and age are key drivers of health, wellbeing and inequalities in life chances. Preventing ill health related to these “social determinants of health” requires well-coordinated policies across many sectors, such as the economy, welfare, housing, education and employment. SIPHER will deliver novel evidence on the complex and interlinked consequences of policy decisions and associated costs and benefits. This will help our policy partner organisations identify opportunities for the strategic alignment of policies across government sectors and give decision makers the confidence to change the way major investment decisions are made.

SIPHER (Systems science in Public health and Health Economics Research) brings together scientists from seven universities, three government partners at local, regional and national level, and twelve practice partner organisations. It is led by Prof Petra Meier, University of Glasgow and Prof Robin Purshouse, University of Sheffield.

We plan to deliver four outcomes:

• New insights into the complex links between causes and consequences, for example the interdependencies between work, income, housing, poverty and health
• A new systems sciences approach to the economics of prevention, for example by examining the costs and benefits of policies that have outcomes affecting multiple government sectors
• A move towards multi-sectoral policy design, appraisal and evaluation: Our new methods will make transparent trade-offs between outcomes, and opportunities for win-wins. They will also allow the long-term monitoring of policy effects across the whole system to gain insight into expected and unexpected effects.
• Lasting change to partners’ policy processes: SIPHER will inform the development of cross-governmental business cases and budget allocation decisions by providing new cross-sector cost-benefit analyses.

For more information visit the SIPHER website or follow them on Twitter @SipherC.

SPECTRUM is a research consortium composed of researchers, advocacy, policy and other partners focused on the commercial determinants of health, health inequalities and the prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The consumption of products such as tobacco, alcohol and foods high in salt, sugar and fat is a major cause of health conditions such as cancer, heart disease, respiratory diseases and diabetes. SPECTRUM aims to generate new evidence to inform the prevention of NCDs caused by unhealthy commodities and to transform policy and practice to encourage the adoption of healthy environments and behaviours.

We bring together 11 Universities in the UK and one in Australia, leading alliances that aim to improve health and reduce inequalities in the UK and further afield, in addition to Public Health England, Public Health Scotland and Public Health Wales, and an independent company specialising in retail data.

Through eight interconnected themes, SPECTRUM’s research will improve understanding of how commercial activity and the consumption of unhealthy products have an impact on public health, inequalities and the wider economy. It will highlight the unhelpful strategies used by UCPs and how they can be regulated, while supporting the development and evaluation of policies to prevent and address harm from these products, and improve health.

Find out more at: SPECTRUM Consortium or follow them on Twitter @SPECTRUM

TRUUD investigates urban planning and development systems with a view to embedding the prevention of risk factors that give rise to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and health inequalities in decision-making on planning. The work will build on previous research funded under initiatives such as Wellcome’s Our Planet Our Health. The UKPRP funding will now increase understanding of the barriers and opportunities to creating healthy urban environments by focusing on the actors who influence it – landowners, developers, investors, local and devolved government, communities, etc. – and the systems of governance relating to decision-making about the urban environment. The intention is to target leverage points in the complex, urban planning and development system with economic valuation of health impacts. This will be achieved by examining the systems in two major UK cities by partnering with Bristol City Council and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. The consortium will consider case studies (on streets for all, clean air zone etc.) in these areas before co-producing other interventions that will be informed by literature reviews and engagement with stakeholders and the lay public.

For more information visit the TRUUD website or follow them on Twitter @ResearchTruud.

GroundsWell aims to drive community innovation applying systems science that maximise the contribution of the Urgan Green and Blue Space to the primary prevention of, and reduction in equalities in, non-communicable diseases in urban settings.

Kailo – which means connected or whole - is an evidence-informed framework that will develop, test and scale an evidence-informed framework in order to support local partnerships to co-design strategies that address the underlying drivers of poor adolescent mental health.

The Violence, Health and Society Consortium (VISION) aims to reduce the violence that harms health by improving the measurement and analyses of data on violence.

GENIUS aims to build a network that considers the food system across the preschool, primary and secondary school settings in the UK, and school food provision in order to influence the quality of children’s diets and reduce inequalities in dietary intake. The network will use a range of methods such as systems mapping and network analysis to improve understanding of the current UK school food landscape, differences and best practice across the four UK nations and explore opportunities for population- and system-level interventions that could improve diet quality and inequalities. Activities will facilitate interactions between academics, policy makers and practitioners to generate fresh insights on this important challenge.

Follow the GENIUS on Twitter: @GeniusSFN

MatCHNet is a UK-wide network bringing together academics, policy stakeholders, data holders, practitioners, and NGOs to prioritise policy evaluation in the early years. Giving every child the best start in life is a key policy goal for a healthier society. Each child’s health is affected by socio-economic, cultural, political and environmental factors (collectively known as the social determinants) that act at the national, community, household, and family level. Interventions to tackle the social determinants of health can result in better outcomes during pregnancy and early childhood. These health improvements will lead to a reduction in the prevalence of adult non-communicable diseases (NCDs), narrow health inequalities, and increase life chances.

Our multidisciplinary community, from across the 4 UK nations, is prioritising upstream policy interventions that can be evaluated using cross-country administrative data. Current academic disciplines involved in MatCHNet include epidemiology, child health, health informatics, population health statistics, public health science, health economics, and social science disciplines. The network will map administrative longitudinal data that can be linked and harmonised across the UK, and will determine suitable methods to evaluate national policies and make cross-country comparisons.

For more information, please see the MatCHNet website and follow them on Twitter: @MatCHNet_

PETRA aims to explore the relationships between trade policy and NCDs, focussing mainly on tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed foods to determine how trade could improve health. The network will review the existing knowledge on the topic to assess if trade and investment agreements (TIAs) take health into account and to identify barriers to this. Other activities include sandpits for setting research priorities and roundtable discussions on public attitudes to TIAs.

For more information, please see the PETRA website or follow them on Twitter: @petra_network

The Population Health Agent-based Simulation nEtwork (PHASE) is a UK Prevention Research Partnership funded research network that supports the use of agent-based simulation models in addressing population health challenges.

PHASE will bring together researchers, computer software developers, policy-makers, and voluntary organisations who are interested in understanding the complexities underlying public health challenges. We will provide networking events, training, resources and funding opportunities to develop and equip research teams with the knowledge, skills and support they need to develop ambitious agent-based modelling projects.

By supporting different groups to work together, we can build the capacity and expertise needed to develop innovative large-scale modelling projects that aim to tackle key public health issues like obesity, tobacco and alcohol use, and physical activity and exercise. We aim to: Build and support multi-disciplinary research teams focused on addressing population health challenges Support methodological innovation Co-develop research programmes between agent-based modelling specialists and evidence users Provide evidence to enable change within complex systems to prevent  non-communicable diseases.

We aim to:

• Build and support multi-disciplinary research teams focused on addressing population health challenges
• Support methodological innovation
• Co-develop research programmes between agent-based modelling specialists and evidence users
• Provide evidence to enable change within complex systems to prevent  non-communicable diseases.

For more information visit the PHASE website and follow them on Twitter: @phase_network