Healthy people, healthy places

The NIHR SPHR held its sixth Annual Scientific Meeting on Tuesday 26^th March 2019 at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead. The meeting brought together almost 200 delegates with representation from across the membership of the School along with public health professionals, our colleagues in Public Health England, the wider NIHR and our public representatives.

Professor Ashley Adamson, NIHR SPHR Director, opened the event ‘Healthy people, healthy places’ with an overview of the future plans for the School and discussed how the School will address key public health priorities within its research programmes and cross-cutting themes. Alice Wiseman, Director of Public Health at Gateshead Council, welcomed delegates to Gateshead, introduced the public health challenges facing the Council and described their innovative approach to tackling these challenges.

Duncan Selbie, Chief Executive at Public Health England, delivered the plenary ‘Making population health everyone’s business’. He spoke about the importance of using research and evidence to engage with decision makers to influence policy and inspiring the next generation of public health researchers.

Research programme and theme leads presented plans for the next three years and provided an overview of how NIHR SPHR research will help address key public health issues.

A number of SPHR researchers presented research findings from the early phase projects commissioned at the outset of the second quinquennium of the School, highlighting the breath of work and expertise across the School.

Towards the end of the day, Professor Clare Bambra facilitated a thought provoking panel discussion ‘What are the main challenges facing public health in England today and how can SPHR help to address them?’. Members on the panel included Professor Susan Michie (UCL), Professor Eugene Milne (Director of Public Health at Newcastle City Council), Professor Brian Ferguson (Chief Economist at Public Health England), Alice Wiseman (Director of Public Health at Gateshead Council) and Professor David Taylor-Robinson (LiLaC).

The NIHR SPHR PhD students presented posters of their research to delegates with a number of prizes awarded for the best posters
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Thank you for your participation in making this event a success!

Latest News
Vacancy: Professor in Public Health/Preventative Healthcare

Teesside University are currently recruiting a Professor in Public Health/Preventative Healthcare within the School of Health & Social Care, we expect this post will have a clear link and engagement with Fuse. The closing date is 9^th June 2019. Further details can be found on the Teesside University website, any queries should be routed via Teesside.

Course: Driving social change and improving health and wellbeing: An introduction to systems resilience
The concept of resilience is typically presented as a property of individuals, communities, organizations or service sectors such as the health system. Resilience is understood to be the “capacity to endure, adapt and generate new ways of thinking and functioning” in the context of change, uncertainty or adversity. As evidence of the negative impacts of global recession on social and health inequalities accumulates, health policy attention has turned to the question of how the resilience of communities bearing the brunt of these inequalities can be enhanced. As a consequence, there is a growing call to focus on a systems resilience approach. The course will introduce the concept of systems resilience that emphasises releasing the capacities of all the actors, institutions, objects and processes within a neighbourhood system. Participants will reflect what a systems approach might offer to health and wellbeing, individually and collectively. At the end of the course participants will be better equipped to become an agent for change in population health. The course will be held 23-25 September, Llatzeret de Mao, Menorca, Spain. More information here.

Guidance on systems approaches to local public health evaluation
Led by Prof. Mark Petticrew and Dr. Matt Egan at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the SPHR project 'Developing a systems perspective for the evaluation of local public health interventions: theory, methods and practice' aimed to better understand and develop guidance for practitioners on how research can take account of local ‘systems’ that shape service delivery and impacts (sometimes called a complex systems perspective). Successfully launched at the NIHR SPHR Annual Scientific Meeting on 26th March 2019, the guidance (available here) shows practitioners how to describe complexity, and how to think about its impact on their work - in particular, how it might make interventions more or less feasible and effective.

Call for abstracts for The Lancet Public Health Science 2019
The conference encompasses all areas of public health, with a focus on methodological innovation and transdisciplinary insights. It is a forum for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to discuss new research, methods and perspectives on improving the health of the public. Peer-reviewed abstracts of shortlisted papers will be published by The Lancet, online and in print. Submissions are encouraged from a wide array of disciplines and methodological approaches under any of the following themes: creativity in public health science, new methodological approaches to public health science and impact and implementation of public health science in policy and practice. The deadline is 17 June 2019. More information here.

Establishment of a contact database of food redistribution organisations
Researchers from UCL are in the early stages of developing a community based obesity intervention which would involve partnering with organisations (charities, supermarketsm restaurants, cafes, churches...etc) who re-purpose food. This involves distributing left over freshly prepared food for raw ingredients (eg. vegetables) to those in need (shelters, foodbanks...etc.) To enable a conversation with such organisations across the UK, the team would like to establish a contact database. Please contact r.raine@ucl.ac.uk with details (name of organisation, contacts details and a brief summary of their work).

Toolkit to help engage BME (Black and minority ethic) groups
Recently the CLAHRC (NIHR Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care) East Midlands developed a useful toolkit to help answer the question of how we better engage BME groups. The toolkit aims to capture such best practice and provide researchers with a framework on how to improve the participation ofBME groups in research. You can find the toolkit here.

The NIHR Central Commissioning Facility (CCF) involvement and engagement plan 2019-20
NIHR CCF have recently published their report which can be accessed here.

Please submit recent news or publications for inclusion in the next SPHR internal bulletin to sphr@Newcastle.ac.uk

Funding Opportunities
Tobacco cessation, control and harm reduction interventions (PHR Programme)
Applicants should justify the importance of their proposed research and identify how the work supports aspirations to improve health outcomes, enable individuals/populations to better manage their health or improve the delivery of healthcare services and show how the findings will be relevant to policy making. The deadline for stage 1 applications is 1pm, 30 July 2019. More information here.

NIHR Development and Skills Enhancement Award
The DSE award is a new post-doctoral level award aimed at supporting NIHR Academy Members to gain specific skills and experience to support the next phase of their research career. The award will run three times annually opening in May, September and January; and will support a mixture of researcher led applications and applications from areas of strategic importance. The deadline is 1pm, 31st July 2019. More information here.

Call for ambitious data-enabled trials, health services and public health research studies
The HTA, HS&DR and PHR programmes are interested in funding studies using innovative data-enabled designs to answer pressing knowledge gaps for health, public health and, or social care evidence users, NHS patients, people with lived experience and, or policy makers. Deadline for stage 1 applications is 1pm, 4 September 2019. More information here.

Understanding the potential of place to impact health and health inequalities
The Public Health Research Programme is interested in research on place-based interventions to improve health and to reduce health inequalities. The environment around us can impact our mental and physical health and influence our health-related behaviours and choices. Some places, buildings and spaces can be health-promoting whilst others may have the opposite effect. Proposals are encouraged that look upstream or take a broader, whole system perspective which looks at the impact of place as an integrated whole. Deadline for submission is 1pm, 12 November 2019. More information here.

Events, Conferences & workshops
The 16th Annual INEBRIA conference 2019
INEBRIA (International Network on Brief Interventions for Alcohol & Other Drugs) is an international network, primarily consisting of researchers, and importantly also including policy makers, practitioners and other stakeholders interested in the potential of brief interventions in health and other settings to reduce the problems caused by alcohol and other drug use. The organisation aims to provide global leadership in the development, evaluation and implementation of evidence-based practice in the area of early identification and brief intervention for hazardous and harmful substance use. This year’s conference seeks to share findings from ongoing brief intervention research around the world, with a strong emphasis on studies to promote the implementation and scale-up of evidence-based practice. The event is also keen to engage junior researchers in the field, providing them with a forum for presenting their work and finding mentoring opportunities.
The event will be held in Lubeck, Germany on 26-27 September 2019. More information and booking here.

If you would like an item to be included in the next SPHR internal bulletin please contact sphr@newcastle.ac.uk