Transforming lives through Applied Health Sciences Research

Our vision

We are a people focussed, collaborative, high performing community delivering transformative health orientated research that impacts on how health and care are characterised, experienced, and delivered locally, nationally, and globally. 

Our values

Embedded in all that we do are the core values of:

• valuing the people we work with and for;
• working together across sectors, disciplines, populations and communities;
• integrity in how we conduct our research and work with others; 
• making a difference by increasing understanding of health at significant points across the lifespan, co-developing interventions to improve health and care, and strengthening the evidence base for improving the quality of care sustainably and at scale locally, nationally and globally; 
• excellence in applied health sciences research, including innovative, impact focused methodologies.

Research themes

Our research is underpinned by principles of equity and reduction of health inequalities. We actively seek to include people who are marginalised within social, community and health systems in our research. 

Our collaborations are based on the principles of equitable partnership and support for innovative research, which results in mutually beneficial outcomes for all involved. 

• Understanding health: exploring people’s experience of health and wellbeing and the challenges of providing equitable healthcare. 
• Innovation in health: developing and testing interventions that contribute to positive health outcomes for all. 
• Improving health service delivery: design for practice change, quality and safety, equity, service improvement and evidence implementation.

We have five research groups who work within and across complementary topic or methodological areas: 

• Healthy active ageing: The Healthy Active Ageing Research Group (HAAR) investigates health and wellbeing experiences of growing older (from mid to later life), particularly concerning marginalised older people with an important focus on the individual and community-based challenges of population ageing.
• Improvement and Implementation Research Group (IIMPRES): our research focus is Healthcare improvement and innovation through co-creating and applying knowledge and evidence to improve the delivery of care and Implementation and scaling up of health interventions through co-developing approaches to the equitable implementation and scaling up of health policy, programmes and practices.
• Living well with long-term conditions:  The Living Well with Long-Term Conditions (LWLTC) research group works with people who have post-acute or long-term conditions affecting their physical and mental health, focussing on understanding their experiences and working with them to develop and evaluate new interventions to support them to improve and maintain their health and wellbeing.
• Mother, infant and child health: We deliver impactful research to improve the health and wellbeing of women, babies, children and their families, and to reduce health inequalities focussing on infant feeding quality of care, perinatal mental health and adverse childhood experiences. 
• Substance Use Research Group: (SURG) conducts research which aims to understand the harms associated with a wide range of substances, and to inform the design and delivery of interventions and services.