A team of researchers from the Universities of Exeter, Cardiff, and Birmingham will spend five years producing rapid, high-quality evidence reviews on public health topics for the NIHR. The team will identify knowledge gaps in priority areas—such as the effectiveness of interventions, their implementation, and their economic costs—and synthesise existing studies using methods including meta-analysis, qualitative synthesis, and AI-assisted searching. This matters because public health decision-makers often lack clear, up-to-date summaries of what the evidence actually says, especially on complex issues like health equity or transferring an intervention from one community to another. If the reviews succeed, they will directly shape which public health programmes the NIHR funds and how those programmes are designed. The impact is practical: a local authority considering a new obesity prevention scheme, for example, could draw on a review to decide whether the approach is likely to work in its specific context. The team will also produce plain-language summaries, policy briefings, and creative outputs like podcasts and infographics to reach non-specialist audiences. This is applied, policy-facing work—not fundamental science—with a clear aim of improving how public money is spent on health interventions.
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Background: The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has commissioned a Public Health Review Team to conduct public health evidence reviews. Aims and objectives: The Review Team will produce reviews that respond to knowledge gaps in priority areas within the NIHR Public Health Research Programme’s remit and identify research questions that can inform future public health research that has significant policy and practice impact. Public Health Review Team: The NIHR Public Health Review Team will comprise diverse, interdisciplinary substantive and methodological experts from the Universities of Exeter, Cardiff and Birmingham. The Review Team has an outstanding track record of leading and delivering complex systematic reviews, engaging with large and mixed teams of academic and practice-based collaborators. It will leverage infrastructure resources and networks across three institutions and two national contexts. Methods: The Review Team will draw upon best practice in evidence synthesis for the formulation and conduct of reviews, utilising Artificial Intelligence where appropriate. Reviews will commence with stakeholder consultation and rapid evidence scoping to ensure evaluability and relevance. Protocols will adhere to reporting guidelines and be registered with a suitable register (e.g. PROSPERO). Review designs may focus on specific target bodies of evidence (e.g. outcome evaluations), or include parallel, integrative syntheses of epidemiology, qualitative evidence, theories of change, process/implementation evaluations, and economic evaluations. Study identification and selection will use established processes. Quality appraisal will draw upon methodologically appropriate tools (e.g. Cochrane). Synthesis methods will be tailored to the target bodies of evidence. This will likely include narrative synthesis, meta-analysis (including network meta-analysis), meta-regression, qualitative comparative analysis, thematic synthesis, meta-ethnography and realist synthesis. Additional syntheses will consider health equity harms. Where reviews are intervention focused, they will attend to transferability and transportability beyond the original implementation context, using tools such as logic models, to support this process. Timelines for delivery: The Review Team will serve from 2023 until 2028 (60 months). Anticipated impact and dissemination: The Review Team will undertake a comprehensive programme of dissemination, which may include: 1) Plain language summaries co-produced with public and professional stakeholders for policy, practice and public audiences. These will be used as the basis for creative communication products, such as podcasts, videos and infographics; 2) Policy briefings; 3) Substantive and methodological publications in high impact, peer-reviewed journals; and 4) Academic, policy and practice conferences and events. A bespoke dissemination strategy will be developed for each review through stakeholder consultation. The Review Team will have a number of anticipated impacts. Through identification of evidence clusters, limitations, and gaps, reviews will inform and support the future priorities and funding profile of the NIHR. Depending on the specific review and customer, reviews may suggest ‘best bet’ interventions to provide a framework to guide decision-making for investment, optimise implementation strategies, or inform future needs assessment.
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