What is SPHR?

LiLaC is one of nine leading academic centres with excellence in applied public health research which make up the NIHR School for Public Health Research (NIHR SPHR). The NIHR SPHR aims to build the evidence base for cost-effective, inclusive and equitable public health practice. The School’s research looks at what works practically to improve population health and reduce health inequalities, which can be applied across the country and meets the needs of policymakers, practitioners and the public.

LiLaC’s involvement in the SPHR is led by Prof. David Taylor-Robinson and involves over 20 academics across both the Univeristy of Liverpool and the University of Lancaster.

The NIHR School for Public Health Research is a partnership between the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Exeter and Sheffield; Imperial College London; The London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; the LiLaC collaboration between the Universities of Liverpool and Lancaster; Fuse, The Centre for Translational Research in Public Health, a collaboration between Newcastle, Durham, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside Universities; and PHRESH, the Public Health RESearch for Health consortium, a collaboration between the Universities of Birmingham, Warwick and Keele.

For more information, please visit the SPHR website.

SPHR Programmes involving LiLaC

Health Inequalities (HIP)

The Health Inequalities Programme (HIP) will produce high-quality evidence to support a step change in action on the social inequalities driving health inequalities. It will assess the impact on health inequalities of local and national policies and interventions and create partnerships with disadvantaged groups that have fewer opportunities to get involved in research to improve the relevance and effectiveness of policies and practices.

This programme will focus on three main areas:

- Levelling up and recovering from the pandemic – this theme will provide research-driven evidence to inform local and national actions and policies designed to improve the lives and health of disadvantaged communities and support social and economic recovery from the pandemic.
- Co-creating and mobilising research-based knowledge with minority and marginalised communities to impact on public health policy and practice – this theme will develop and build on partnerships with marginalised communities to generate new knowledge based on their experiences that will inform and shape public health policy and practice.
- Developing equity sensitive methods and tools – this theme will identify ways to use inclusive, intersectional data to better understand the causes of health inequalities and more effectively evaluate the impact of interventions and policies to ensure greater equity.

The Health Inequalities projects that LiLaC are involved with are:

- Evaluating the impact of national and local action aimed at levelling up and pandemic recovery
- Co-creating knowledge partnerships with minoritized & marginalised communities/groups

Children, young people and families (CYPF)

The Children, young people and families programme will provide an evidence base to help address the major health and wellbeing challenges faced by these groups to support and promote children and young people’s development and transition into adulthood. It will research distinct public health challenges at different levels, join up approaches by collaborating with policymakers and practitioners, and work with members of the public from different sectors to identify priorities for research and future investment.

Areas of research within this programme include:

- Inclusive and sustainable environments for children and young people’s health and wellbeing
- Healthy start for life for young children and families
- Health-promoting and inclusive educational settings

The CYPF projects that LiLaC are involved with are:

Healthy places, healthy planet (HPHP)

The Healthy places, healthy planet programme will investigate how to make the places we live in healthier and better for the environment. The programme aims to step out of the traditional boundaries of public health research and adopt a cross-disciplinary approach to generate robust evidence that supports policy, practice and community activities to improve and bring greater equity to population health and environmental sustainability.

Often the barriers that prevent us from living healthy and environmentally sustainable lives are greatest for disadvantaged people and places. This programme will assess these barriers and work towards health and environmental equity that helps to overcome inequalities.

This programme builds on SPHR’s Places and Communities programme and is being expanded to consider wider issues of planetary health.

The HPHP projects that LiLaC is involved with are:

- Evaluating community-led interventions to maximise the health and well-being of climate change adaptations for extreme events
- Understanding variation in English local authority policies for the restriction of harmful commodities advertising and sponsorship: co-creation of a detailed typology and protocol for non-experimental evaluation