Local councils across the UK will get rapid, expert-led evaluations of their public health programmes—from obesity and mental health to climate change and substance misuse—through a new dedicated research centre at London South Bank University. The problem is that local authorities often lack the time, money, or in-house expertise to rigorously test whether their health interventions actually work. This centre, called PHIRST South Bank, fills that gap by embedding a multidisciplinary team of academics directly into the councils’ planning process. A key feature is the “sandpit” approach: researchers, council staff, and service users brainstorm and design a practical, logic-driven research plan in a matter of weeks, not months. If successful, this model will transform how councils spend public health money. Instead of rolling out untested programmes, they will have robust evidence on what works—and what does not—for their specific populations. The centre also builds local research capacity, so councils become better at evaluating their own work over time. Dissemination goes beyond academic papers: findings will reach community groups, national bodies, and policymakers through animations, art exhibitions, and tailored reports. The result is a faster, fairer, and more effective public health system for the people who rely on it.
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The London South Bank University PHIRST Centre will provide LAs and the NIHR with direct access to a large, established, multi-disciplinary team with a background across the broad range of Public Health priorities currently facing LAs including mental health, an ageing population, obesity, climate change, substance misuse as well as the challenges of establishing place-based population health systems and working with complex and vulnerable groups. Drawing on this experience and expertise we propose a systematic project delivery model which places LAs, service users and other stakeholders at the centre of the project design and creation process, in particular featuring a ‘sandpit’ approach to ensure that a relevant, practically deliverable, and logic modelled research plan is developed rapidly. Once a plan is agreed with the LA and NIHR, we will simultaneously build local research capacity, manage ethics oversight and other pre-implementation activities before proceeding to the main implementation stage. Drawing upon stakeholders as required, and in close consultation with the relevant LAs, the project will be delivered in line with the initial plan, supported by a set of decision-making principles to be employed at key milestones in response to ‘known unknowns’, and collaboratively responding to ‘unknown unknowns’. Finally, each project will draw upon our strengths in innovative co-produced dissemination to ensure that the findings of the research project reach all stakeholders in ways which ensure engagement - with tailored strategies aimed at organisational, community and national level organisations and groups. The Centre will also benefit from a governance structure involving a Director supported by a Deputy, a Centre Executive Committee, including members of the LSBU People's Academy. Oversight will be provided by an Advisory Committee with representatives from each of the four nations and from across the public health community. Each evaluation project will comprise a bespoke mix of academics supported by a dedicated research fellow and research assistant and supported by a PPI Advisory Group and a Stakeholder Reference Group. Ethics governance will be provided by LSBU’s University Ethics Panel, working in close collaboration with other stakeholders’ research and ethics oversight teams. To achieve timely and robust delivery, the PHIRST Centre draws upon a genuinely multidisciplinary team of academics from across LSBU - with representatives from five of our University Research Centres (The Centres for Applied Research in Improvement and Innovation; for Addictive Behaviours; for Sports and Exercise Science; for Civil and Building Services Engineering Research; and The Centre for Global Justice and Social Responsibility. It also draws on a wide variety of external academic associates and stakeholder networks linked with the research team. This team demonstrates a strong ability to deliver to tight timescales, based on our experience in partnering with startup health tech SMEs, fast turnaround projects for LAs and responses to unforeseen events such as the COVID19 pandemic. Diverse dissemination is evidenced by activities ranging from traditional academic and stakeholder text-based outputs, to award winning novel methods such as animations and art exhibitions – all of which engage the right stakeholders in the right ways. In summary, this proposal outlines how an existing multidisciplinary group of academics, already working in collaboration alongside a wide network of organisations, can be leveraged to provide timely, stakeholder driven solutions to the issues LAs face.
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