SPHR Areas for research innovation

The School has additional funding to encourage ground-breaking innovative research in public health. Four areas of research innovation have been proposed and are being developed. Find out more about these below:

Data linkage with public health perspectives

The significant health challenges being faced by the UK need data-informed strategies. There is now a considerable amount of data on our health and the things which influence it. ‘Data linkage with public health perspectives’ aims to develop methods and tools so that researchers can better use data to understand and improve our health. One issue with lots of current data systems is that they often exist alone and are difficult to link together. This is a major issue as we know that there is a huge range of factors influencing our health, from early life experiences and circumstances, to local government decisions, to a range of features of the physical and social environment. Being able to look at these in combination and use different approaches in combination will allow us to do more informative and impactful research.

This work area will improve our ability to do the best public health research by:

1. Combining datasets from different parts of the country which give detailed local information. For example, we have datasets covering a range of health factors across multiple areas of England. Using these for collectively will allow us to understand how different health risks (e.g., poverty) influence health in different areas.
2. Develop new ways of combining different methods to enhance our confidence in findings. This will involve adding different indicators of health outcomes into existing datasets and using different approaches to answer each research question.
3. Designing methods to do better and quicker evaluations with existing data. This area will involve developing methods to better apply routine data to existing trials of interventions.
4. Linking information collected from mental health surveys of the same children and young people in 2017, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 to their health and education records. This information would be housed in a national platform so that suitably qualified researchers could make better use of this linked information to improve services and mental health policy for children and young people.

Innovations in Qualitative Research Methods: Transforming Public Health Research Approaches and Perspectives (I-QUEST-PH)

Qualitative research helps us understand people’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences to uncover why they act as they do. To tackle complex health and social issues, we need to think creatively about qualitative methods used in public health. Doing so can make public health research and practice more inclusive, timely, and impactful.

This project seeks to enhance qualitative research methods used in public health, making them more relevant and effective in addressing real-world health needs.

Research Plan, Public Involvement, and Knowledge Mobilisation
The project has five main objectives and five main work strands.

Objectives:
1. Evaluating Existing Methods: We’ll review new methods and adapt traditional methods in public health to understand their effectiveness, applicability, and how ethical they are in various settings.
2. Identifying Challenges and Opportunities: We’ll explore practical and ethical issues researchers face when using new methods in public health studies, especially with approvals and real-world applications.
3. Engaging Stakeholders: We’ll involve public health professionals, researchers, community members, and other stakeholders to understand their needs and preferences in data collection, analysis, and ethical practices, ensuring the methods we develop are inclusive and user focused.
4. Creating Training and Guidance Materials: Resources will be created to help public health researchers and ethics committees in applying these methods ethically.
5. Measuring Impact: We’ll study how these new approaches in qualitative research help in understanding public health issues, engaging communities, and informing public health policies.

Together, these efforts aim to make qualitative research in public health more adaptable, inclusive, and impactful for addressing public health challenges.

Related items

How can voluntary sector organisations be part of innovation in research?

Analysis of local authority public health finance to improve economic methods for public health

Local Authorities have limited funding. They can struggle to provide all the services that they are required to. Public health funding is based within local authorities, and so its funding is also limited.  New Integrated Care Systems, in England, are also asked to improve population health and reduce inequality in health. These also have very limited budgets. Both organisations also have problems with employing sufficient workers to provide health and care services. A key issue in both organisations is therefore to make the most of the finances and other resources that are available.

Tools (‘economic frameworks’) to help decision-makers think about value for money are available.  However, these have been developed outside of public health. They are too narrow for making public health decisions. They don’t think about the many objectives that local authorities and integrated care systems have to achieve. They also don’t take account of things that these organisations have to think about, like restrictions on what can be done because of government rules, different ways of working across organisations, and whether there are enough trained people available to provide services.

This ambitious programme of work will attempt to develop and refine ‘economic frameworks’ that are better suited to helping decision makers in public health to make the most of resources.  It will start by looking at the information that is available about local authority finances.  It will then explore how decisions are currently made for public health.  This will include looking at decision making within local authorities and across integrated care systems.  At the same time, a third set of work will try out innovate economic techniques to answer public health questions.  The final piece of work will bring these different strands together to develop a new approach, and consider how it would work.

Innovation in involvement

The overall aim of this area for research innovation is to further the science and practice of public involvement and engagement, and to support and inform greater and more meaningful involvement in public health research by under-represented and under-served populations.

We want to know more about the best and most creative ways to engage public partners in research. We will explore how we can work with people with many different experiences and backgrounds to take part and contribute to public health research.

We will be focusing on three areas in this work:

1. Creative ways to include more people involved in shaping research. This will include understanding how to involve different groups of people in research. It will focus specifically on how to work with parents and carers and involve them in research that matters to them.
2. Creative tools to get more people involved in shaping research. This will look at the best and safest ways to interact with as many different groups of people as possible. It will focus on working with people using digital tools, such as WhatsApp.
3. Creative ways to share learning about public involvement and engagement. This will look at the best ways to let the public know about the difference their involvement in research makes. It will also try to understand how researchers already do this, and how we can improve.