Local authorities and public health teams across the UK will get direct access to rigorous, co-produced evaluations of their real-world health initiatives through a new research hub called PHIRST Connect. The problem is that many public health programmes—from community weight-loss schemes to air quality campaigns—are launched without robust evidence on whether they actually work, for whom, and at what cost. Local decision-makers often lack the time, funding, or expertise to conduct proper evaluations. PHIRST Connect fills this gap by embedding academic researchers directly into local authority projects, working alongside practitioners and the public to design and carry out evaluations that meet real-world needs. If successful, the programme will produce up to ten evaluations over five years, each taking 15 to 18 months. The impact could be substantial: influencing national guidance on how services are designed, informing decisions about which programmes to fund or cut, and supporting “whole systems” approaches to complex challenges like obesity or health inequality. Findings are tailored for local use—infographics, briefings, presentations—alongside peer-reviewed papers, ensuring evidence reaches the people who need it. The ultimate goal is to shift public health practice from guesswork to evidence, reducing health inequalities in the process.
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Aims PHIRST Connect collaborates with local authorities, public health departments and agencies, their partners and the public, to co-produce robust evaluation of real-world public health initiatives. The research is intended to meet the needs of the public health workforce and their partners so that they have the evidence needed to improve the health and wellbeing of the UK population and reduce health inequalities. Approach taken Partners in the public health initiatives who successfully apply to be evaluated by a PHIRST, collaborate with the nominated team to understand the ‘intervention’. This is achieved by reviewing/adapting or co-developing a logic model describing the intervention and how it is intended to change outcomes. This supports scoping of the potential evaluation and its focus (process, outcomes, costs), taking into account any existing data and project partner needs. If agreed that the ‘intervention’ is evaluable, and approved by NIHR, all partners, including members of the PHIRST Connect Public Involvement in Research group (PIRg), collaborate to produce a detailed project protocol which is made public. Ethics approvals are obtained. The project team undertakes the research in partnership with all relevant stakeholders. Shared decision-making underpins the PHIRST approach, and all partners collaborate to ensure the principles of diversity and reaching under-represented groups are prioritised. Knowledge users and knowledge brokers are identified and mapped as part of knowledge mobilisation and impact planning. Timescales Projects typically take between 15 and 18 months to deliver. Up to ten projects will be delivered over five years. Patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) Inclusion of the public voice is central to PHIRST practice. Our public co-applicant is supported by an expert in public involvement in health research, our team of public contributors, and local public members. They support the research process from planning and delivery to data analysis, dissemination and knowledge mobilisation. Local public representatives are recruited to an advisory group appointed for each project to provide local perspective and views based on their lived experience of the intervention or topic being evaluated. Engagement with policy and practice communities PHIRST Connect have extensively mapped a range of relevant knowledge brokers and users for the findings from our work to date. We will continue to engage those people and organisations to share findings from our research in ways that are of most use to them (e.g. presentations to relevant commissioners’ groups or regional leads’ groups tailored to their needs; briefings for policy and practice). Anticipated impact and dissemination PHIRST Connect prioritises bespoke outputs that capture what local partners have said will be the most useful for them (e.g. infographics, briefings, presentations), and combines these with peer reviewed contributions to the scientific literature. Our focus on knowledge mobilisation helps to amplify the impact beyond the locality involved, to inform and drive change nationally and internationally. The sorts of impact generated to date include: influencing national guidance on how services should be designed; informing de-commissioning decisions; and supporting the planning and development of “systems thinking” approaches (such as a ‘whole systems approach’) to address major public health challenges.
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