A team of researchers from Nottingham, Loughborough, and Lincoln Universities is offering local governments across the UK a rapid, flexible service to evaluate public health interventions—from cycle lanes to stop-smoking programmes—so councils can know what actually works before spending more money. The problem is that local authorities often roll out health initiatives without rigorous testing, wasting limited budgets on programmes that may have little effect. This team—which has published over 1,200 papers and secured more than £32 million in grant income—brings together public health professionals, psychologists, and health economists to design bespoke evaluations for each project. They also train council staff and offer internships to build long-term research capacity. If this succeeds, councils will have reliable evidence on which interventions reduce health inequalities and improve outcomes, allowing them to invest tax money more effectively. The work could influence national guidelines from bodies like NICE and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. Public contributors are involved throughout, ensuring the research reflects community needs. The team can also adapt evaluations mid-project if data or circumstances change.
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Scientific Abstract We are a successful collaboration of Nottingham, Loughborough, and Lincoln Universities with an internationally-recognised track record of high-quality public health research. Together we have published over 1,200 original research papers cited over 34,000 times and have grant income surpassing £32m. Our team includes practicing public health, primary and secondary health and social care professionals, psychologists, methodologists and Patient contributor. We have led translational research in child health, healthy lifestyles, health protection, oral health, transport, rural health and ageing, informing guidelines (e.g. NICE), national policies, strategies and briefings. We disseminate research in formats useful to commissioners and decision influencers (e.g. implementation toolkits) and make our research accessible to the public. We work with UK Local Governments to deliver research, upskill the workforce and build research capacity. This includes offering an extensive range of professional and academic training courses, bespoke training and internships/placements to traditional and non-traditional public health workforce. Our wide-ranging methodological expertise includes, but is not limited to evidence synthesis, intervention and observational studies, qualitative and quantitative data collection and analyses, realist evaluation, health economics and implementation science. We also collaborate extensively with our expert networks from e.g: the National Centre for Sports and Exercise Medicine, East Midlands; Nottingham and Leicester Biomedical Research Centres; Nottingham and East Midlands Applied Research Collaboration; the Lincoln International Institute for Rural Health; Nottingham Mental Health Institute; and non-academic collaborators beyond our universities e.g. Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Together we can deliver flexibly and to schedule. Our Patient, Public Involvement (PPI) strategy involves working with public contributors across the research cycle, from inception to dissemination, adoption and spread. Reducing health inequalities drives our research. We will involve diverse sociodemographic groups appropriate to each project; ensure PPI in our research has bidirectional benefit; offer training to facilitate meaningful involvement and engagement; monitor and evaluate to strengthen these activities and increase their effectiveness and impact. Our PPI work has been the focus of published papers, platform presentations and has won awards. Management and governance: We will establish an independently chaired Oversight Group comprising external experts and PPI members, and an overarching PPI Advisory Group. There will be Project-Specific PPI and Operational Groups for the delivery of each evaluation. Ethical approvals will be sought via one of the lead institutions (Nottingham, Loughborough, Lincoln) (or NHS REC as applicable). Together with local partners we will scope out the feasibility of the evaluation and negotiate adaptations as necessary (e.g. refine the scope, clarify data availability or outcomes). We will co-produce a logic model, evaluation, dissemination and knowledge exchange plan with stakeholders, and then deliver on these. Findings will be disseminated widely and we will engage with decision makers on commissioning and policy implications.
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