Scotland’s public health researchers, policymakers, and practitioners are joining forces in four life-stage working groups—from early childhood to later life—to design and test interventions that can actually reduce the country’s stark health inequalities. The problem is that Scotland has some of the widest health gaps in Western Europe, and many well-intentioned programmes lack rigorous evidence that they work in the real world. This collaboration fills that gap by systematically reviewing what works, then building and evaluating new policies and programmes—such as obesity prevention in children, youth mental health support, chronic disease prevention in adults, and reducing frailty in older people. If successful, the research will change how public health money is spent: instead of funding untested initiatives, Scotland’s health services and local authorities could adopt evidence-based programmes that keep people healthier for longer, reduce pressure on the NHS, and narrow the gap between the richest and poorest. The project also embeds knowledge brokers who translate research findings directly into government policy, so the impact is not just academic—it shapes the rules and services that affect every Scottish citizen.
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The Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy (SCPHRP) was established by the Medical Research Council and the Chief Scientist Office of Scotland in 2007, to build capacity for more informative public health research, addressing the major problems and wide health inequalities of Scotland, and showing how best to prevent and control them. The overall mission of the SCPHRP, set out by its funders in 2007, was twofold: first, to strengthen the evidence base for public health, by developing and testing complex interventions for health improvement; secondly, to facilitate the rapid uptake of research evidence in the development of policy, a process called "knowledge brokering". SCPHRP's three specific objectives for 2008-13 were to: a) Identify key areas of opportunity for developing novel public health interventions in Scotland and move those forward; b) Foster collaboration between government, researchers, and the public health community in Scotland to develop a national programme of intervention development, large-scale implementation and robust evaluation; c) Build capacity within the public health community for collaborative research of the highest quality, with maximum impact on Scottish policies, programmes and practice. In its first 5 years, SCPHRP has created a set of four Working Groups, composed of over eighty researchers as well as policy-makers, professionals and programme managers from many Scottish public health institutions. Each Working Group focuses on one part of the life-course: Early Life; Adolescence and Young Adulthood; Early to Mid-Working Life; and Later Life. Each Group has collaborated closely with SCPHRP staff and trainees since 2008, to create four major scientific reviews of "what works" to prevent or control key public health problems in Scotland across the life-course. These reviews have been widely read inside Scotland and beyond. Working Group interactions have led to more context-sensitive, policy-relevant research projects being designed and funded - initially through SCPHRP seed grants in 2009-12 - and more recently through the winning, by spin-off multi-disciplinary teams, of major grants to evaluate novel public health programmes and policies, funded by UK-level research agencies. In 2013-18, SCPHRP will develop four new primary research and knowledge brokering (transfer and exchange) programmes to meet its fundamental objective of equitably improving Scottish health status. These programmes are based on established SCPHRP partnerships across academia and Scottish public health. Each will be supported by named Working Group Collaborators, and one SCPHRP Fellow and staff. Each is focused on a Scottish public health priority, within one of four life-course stages. The programmes and their objectives are: 1) Child Obesity and Development: to quantify the drivers, patterns and consequences of child obesity, in order to: a) develop new policies and programmes; b) assess the effectiveness of current obesity and child development programmes across Scotland, using the Growing Up in Scotland study of 14,000 children born since 2002; 2) Promoting Positive Youth Outcomes: to develop and evaluate preventive interventions - especially delivered via community, parenting, or school-based programmes - aimed at keeping high-risk youth behaviours from developing in the first place; 3) Preventing Acquisition of Adult Chronic Disease Risk Factors: to inform the development of, and eventually evaluate, novel preventive interventions (school, workplace, community) to keep adults healthy as they age, through new analyses of the seven Scottish Health Surveys since 1995; 4) Frailty and Dependency Inequalities in the Elderly: to develop and test preventive measures to equitably reduce frailty and dependence on others - as well as support independent living at home for older persons of all social groups - informed by a new Scottish longitudinal study of aging.
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