Evaluating use and acceptability of, funding mechanisms and demand for online spatial data visualisation tools for local public health decision-support: learning from Feat 2.0 and PCT
Research Team: Dr Thomas Burgoine, Professor Martin White, Oliver Francis, Dr James Woodcock, Professor Steven Cummins, Professor Petra Meier, Dr Pablo Monsivais & Dr Rachel Aldred
Who's involved: University of Cambridge, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine & University of Sheffield
May 2018 - October 2019
Online spatial data visualisation tools offer an important avenue for translating scientific research into action to promote the public’s health, and to reduce health inequalities that may emerge from environmental inequities.
At a time when many local authorities lack resources and in-house tools, these online tools have a clear decision-support role to play, and are becoming increasingly popular. There remains a significant knowledge gap with regards to understanding the demand for these tools, and their potential, acceptability, affordability, financial sustainability, and how they are used in practice.
The application of this learning could help to reduce time and resource costs for researchers developing such tools in the future. This project will address these areas of interest using a combination of case study research, online questionnaires, semi-structured one-to-one interviews, intelligence gathering and consensus building workshops.
The collaborative approach aims to learn from the reflections of key stakeholders, and from the developers of existing tools within academic, local authority and national policy settings.
The recently developed Food environment assessment tool (Feat) and the Propensity to Cycle Tool (PCT) will be used as case studies, while also learning from a wider range of examples.
The project will produce nine formal outputs over 18 months. This will include three academic journal articles, including a general framework for the development of future data-driven tools, and six non-academic outputs, including the development of Feat 2.0 to support local authority policy and practice.
Reducing obesity requires a change in what and how we eat. The ‘Foodscape’ study aimed to identify effective interventions to change the meals offered by takeaways, test them in the real world and evaluate their potential for improving diets and /or reducing obesity.
October 2013 - March 2017
This project complements the Foodscape Project previously funded by SPHR. Whilst the Foodscape project focused on changing what food is served in takeaways, this new project will focus on local authority action to restrict the rapid increase of hot-food takeaways.
November 2017 - February 2019
This research aims to identify, map and explore the use of policy levers and interventions that can be used to influence population health change, in the common local food system across English Local Authorities (LA).
July 2018 - June 2019
