Our current projects

There has been a normalisation of Public Patient Involvement (PPI) in public health research. However, there remains tension between expectations of how PPI will work and its implementation and impact in public health policy-facing research. This project aims to understand reasons for lack of acceptance and implementation of PPI and develop guidelines for its improvement. Read more

While the UK is in the vanguard of global tobacco control, having implemented a raft of policies this century aimed at discouraging young people from starting to smoke and encouraging smokers to quit, more needs to be done to meet the 2030 smoke free target. The project aim is to explore how young people (11-17 years) and adult smokers respond to cigarette sticks/papers which display warnings and/or that are an unappealing colour, and inserts with messaging aimed at promoting quitting. Read more

This will be a collaborative project delivered in partnership between the Older People and Frailty PRU and the Public Health PRU. The aim of this research is to provide an overview of existing evidence on sexual health needs and sexual health promotion in later life. Read more

Climate change is bringing UK public health and climate policy closer together. The project’s aim is to contribute to a shared evidence base for integrated and equity-focused policies to promote population health and to respond to climate change. It will do this by producing a set of open-source Evidence Collections that fill key evidence gaps across the two policy fields and highlight interventions that benefit both the health of people and the planet.   Read more

There is a need to understand current attitudes and experiences regarding access to various forms of contraception in the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and shifting landscape of service delivery. This project aims to examine women’s experiences (and barriers and facilitators) of accessing contraception services since the start of the pandemic, both for new users of contraception and those with prior experience, and to understand any inequalities of access. Read more

England’s public health policy aims to combine overall improvements in population health with greater improvements among disadvantaged groups and communities. The most deprived areas of England have the lowest healthy life expectancy. After carrying out a scooping review this project aims to identify, ‘map’, and synthesise evidence on to reduce risk behaviours in disadvantaged groups and among people living in deprived areas. Read more

The ‘Standardised Packaging and Tobacco Products Regulations’ and ‘Tobacco Products and Related Regulations’ have transformed the appearance of cigarette packaging in the UK. The aim of this project is to provide an update and synthesise of findings from research exploring consumer, tobacco industry or retailer response to standardised packaging of tobacco products that has been conducted since February 2019. Read more

Across England, there is a manifesto commitment to end Rough Sleeping 2024, with a strategic focus on health. To protect those sleeping rough during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was the launch and implementation of the ‘Everyone In’ programme—the first national attempt at a coordinated offer of access to universal accommodation. This project provides an opportunity to understand the potential for improving integrated, multi-agency care and access to support for people experiencing rough sleeping, and lessons learned to inform future policy. Read more

This project aims to develop a better understanding of the drivers of inequalities in child welfare outcomes, and the subsequent consequences for health and education. It will deliver new evidence on pathways to inequalities in “Children in Need” (CiN), and will identify policy entry points, allowing the development of better policies to tackle inequalities in social care. Read more

This project will develop theory concerning how agency is exerted and the different actors required for population interventions to achieve their effects. It will design a new tool to categorise population interventions based on the degree of agency required of all relevant actors, and apply it to systematically reviewed studies of population interventions for diet and physical activity. Read more