SCPHRP MANDATE, ACTIVITIES and ACCOMPLISHMENTS 2008-2012 Our mandate was derived from a planning process involving MRC, CSO and Scottish Government representatives in 2006-7 and is clearly laid out on our website www.scphrp.ac.uk. The Collaboration was created to: • Identify key areas of opportunity for developing novel public health interventions that equitably address major health problems in Scotland, and move those forward. • 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. • Build capacity within the public health community for collaborative research of the highest quality, with maximum impact on Scottish policies, programs and practice. In the first three-and-one-half years of operation, the Collaboration has focused on the following key activities (for details, see: www.scphrp.ac.uk ):
The formation and support of four multi-disciplinary Working Groups [Early Life, Adolescence and Young Adulthood, Early to Mid Working Life, Later Life]: Membership of 80, spanning academia and the public health policy, programme and practice realms, working to build decisionmaker/researcher relationships, and augment capacity to inform decision-making -- focused on Scotland's major public health problems.
The development of comprehensive Scottish-framed syntheses of the global scientific evidence for public health interventions to tackle these major problems, so as to improve population health status and reduce inequalities. These four "Environmental Scans", available on our website since 2010 and reviewed by Working Group members and expert international peer-reviews, have been widely read and cited by Scottish policy and practice leaders, including official policy documents:
Interventions for Promoting Early Child Development for Health.
Adolescent and Young Adult Health in Scotland.
Policy Interventions to Tackle the Obesogenic Environment.
Promoting Health and Wellbeing in Later Life.
The establishment of interdisciplinary research-project teams, emerging from the four SCPHRP Working Groups, composed of both Scottish researchers and public health decision-makers to create pilot/demonstration projects tackling the major health problems in Scotland. These projects have led to 7 competitively awarded, peer-reviewed Seed Grants in 2010-11; and a second round of 8 Pilot/Demonstration Project Grants funded, for 2011-2013. Notably, three teams have recently been awarded major NIHR Public Health Research grants, worth a total of more than £3 million – one project (DISPLAY, Haw et al.) evaluates the pending point-of-sale legislation on tobacco; one (SEED, Henderson, Wight et al.) evaluates a school-based programme for preventing risky teen behaviours; and one (THRIVE, Henderson et al.) evaluates a novel parenting programme for high-risk families with young children. These complex, multi-disciplinary grants require close links between academia
Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy MRC Human Genetics Unit Western General Hospital Crewe Road Edinburgh EH4 2XU telephone +44 (0) 131 332 2471 ext 2131/2199 fax +44 (0) 131 467 8456 www.scphrp.ac.uk
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and public health practitioners in the field; the principle investigators attribute these grants to the “incubator” function of the corresponding SCPHRP Working Groups over the last three years.
The creation and delivery of a variety of continuing education offerings to professional public health audiences in the Scottish Government and NHS-Health Scotland, and an NHS Health Boards. This training aims to increase the ability of such professionals to critically appraise published epidemiological studies, and to better utilize population health data, and research, in their decisionmaking.
The hosting of 15 public lectures, scientific seminars, and workshops since 2008, which have attracted attendance by hundreds of Scottish and international SCPHRP stakeholders.
The core training of the holders of four competitively awarded MRC/CSO Career Development Fellowships since 2009, as well as the teaching and supervision of selected other post-graduate trainees enrolled in the FPH Specialist Registrar programme in Public Health, and/or Masters-level degrees, or post-doctoral Fellowships, based at various UK universities.
The formal and informal provision of rapid, confidential, expert scientific consultation services to several branches of the Scottish Government, at their request, concerning various public health initiatives and their evaluation, including:
Vitamin D policy (2009); Equally Well demonstration projects (2009-10); Obesity Route-Map policy document (2009-10); Alcohol Monitoring and Evaluation Research Group (2008-10); Early Years Framework (and the related Parliamentary Inquiry into Preventative Spending) (2009-11); Advisory processes to the selection by the Quality Advisory Board’s “Quality Outcome Indicators” Team of core health and health-inequality indicators for Scotland, especially the novel use of Birth-Weight-for-Gestational-Age, and the Early Development Instrument on school entry (2010-11); The evaluation of the Change Fund's impacts on elderly persons’ hospitalization rates and lengths of stay (2011-), featuring a novel mixed methods design; The issue of Universal Health Checks (2011-); Good Places, Better Health (2010-11) project’s multi-disciplinary Evaluation Committee, synthesizing the global evidence of the natural and built environments’ impact on several major child-health outcomes. The publication (Frank J and Haw S. The Milbank Quarterly 2011 ; 89:658- 93) -- in a topranked international population health and health policy journal -- of a methodological guide to the monitoring of SES disparities in health status, based on cutting-edge Scottish reports spanning a dozen routinely collected health outcomes, measured repeatedly since 1998 (preprint available on our website). The championing , through hosting a major international workshop in March 2011 [together with the Scottish Health Informatics Programme (SHIP), the Information Services Division of NHS Scotland, and the multi-campus Centre for Research on Families and Relationships] of novel cross- sectoral record-linkage applications in Scotland. These linkage analyses are essential for: 1) elucidating the full population burdens, and contributing antecedents, of major illness and dysfunction in high-risk Scottish sub-populations; 2)robustly and efficiently evaluating public health policies, programmes and practices aimed at reducing these burdens. The SCPHRP is consequently represented on two high-level SG committees developing a more streamlined and responsive approach, building increased capacity for such record linkage in the future. It is also a co-lead on the £4.2 million SHIP-led Scottish “E-Health” Outline Bid, to a consortium of multiple UK research funding agencies, recently shortlisted for full bid submission in February 2012.
Updated Feb. 02, 2012 (JF)