Public Health Intervention Responsive Studies Team: PHIRST Connect

Public Health Interventions Responsive Studies teams (PHIRSTs) aim to deliver rapid, robust, co-produced evaluation of interventions put forward by public health departments and selected by the NIHR. The University of Hertfordshire (UH) led PHIRST team, led by Prof Katherine Brown and Prof Wendy Wills, is formed of highly experienced researchers who understand the challenges faced by the public health system and its partners in the UK, because they have co-produced research with them and their service users over many years. The core team consists of a Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) co-applicant and ten leading academics from UH, the University of East Anglia (UEA), the University of Birmingham (UB) and Ulster University (UU). The wider multidisciplinary team in these institutions includes expertise from across the Social, Behavioural, Life and Clinical Sciences, with experience of policy-relevant public health evaluation research delivered in partnership with health improvement, health protection, air quality, social work, social care, mental health, healthcare, sports, education and criminal justice collaborators. The methodological expertise within the team, underpinned by access to the Research Design Service (RDS) and Clinical Trials Support Network (CTSN) at UH is extensive. The team has delivered numerous examples of randomised controlled trials, quasi-experimental designs, natural experiments and observational studies; extensive qualitative investigations; numerous mixed methods studies including nested process evaluation in trials and cohort studies; and realist evaluation designs. The UH led team is extensively networked to other academics and the public health system across the UK. In addition to the breadth of expertise within the four institutions and extant research collaborations the team holds, access to a diverse range of expertise is also afforded to the team via their leadership and involvement within; the NIHR Applied Research Collaborations, the NIHR Clinical Research Networks, the NIHR Research Design Service and the Academic Health Science Networks. The team also has extensive links and networks to public health departments, local authorities and service provider organisations across all four nations of the UK. Membership of a range of discipline specific networks and societies by team members provide further national reach and access to expertise. Co-production sits at the heart of the UH led PHIRST team’s approach. In collaboration with our PPI co-applicant, the team will establish a PHIRST Public Involvement in Research group (PIRg) with oversight of all PHIRST projects. Project specific PIRgs will also be established with local and project specific experience. PIRg members will work with the academics and local authorities in partnership to co-deliver evaluation research using the following steps: 1) carry out evaluability assessment (and co-opt additional expertise if required) 2) consideration of evaluation plans with all partners including the PHIRST core advisory group 3) draft, refine and finalise research protocols and impact and dissemination strategies, and gain required ethics approvals 4) project induction; defining all partner roles and responsibilities, training on project management tools 5) Co-deliver projects 6) Project reflection and shared learning to feed into new projects and 7) Engage in dissemination and impact generation activities (which will also co-occur with step 5).