Identifying and validating a core public mental health outcome set (PMH WP2)
Research Team: Prof Scott Weich
Who's involved: University of Bristol, University of Cambridge, Fuse, University of Sheffield & UCL
March 2019 - June 2021
The research will seek to identify the most effective methods of measuring public mental health. This will allow public health professionals to track changes in the mental health of communities or larger populations and to effectively evaluate interventions designed to improve public mental health. The study will recommend a suite of outcome measures which are valid for use in the adult general population and that span the key domains of public mental health identified through extensive stakeholder engagement. The study will also explore whether these measures exist in routine data sources and how public health professionals can access these data.
This project aims to develop a set of effective ways to measure public mental health by considering what good mental health looks like in the broadest sense. Without the right tools to know what is working and what is not, it is difficult to develop the right solutions. Therefore, the ability to detect changes in public mental health is crucial for researchers but also of great importance to members of the public, because meaningful measurement can lead to better interventions that identify, prevent or improve mental health problems.
Evaluations of Public mental health (PMH) initiatives have been criticised as being fragmented and of poor quality, with a wide range of outcome measures used. This means that comparing between studies and larger scale ‘natural experiments’ are difficult. The aim of this work package is to develop, validate and agree a suite of core outcome sets appropriate for use in evaluative public mental health research.
This project will include five stages, including a scoping review of PMH outcome measures used in previous studies, evidence synthesis, stakeholder consultation, exploring routine data sources, and dissemination.
The project will be informed by the COMET initiative, which has sought to guide and coordinate the development of core outcome sets across the widest possible range of health conditions and health care settings.
We are developing an evidence-based core outcome set for PMH, using the COMET initiative (protocol).
Plackett, R., Hulin, J., Mukuria, C. et al. Measures of social connectedness in adult populations: a systematic review. BMC Public Health 24, 3384 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-20779-0
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