Tower Hamlets Health Determinants and Inequalities Research System (THIRST)

Background: Tower Hamlets is a place of diversity, significant deprivation, and rapid growth within a dense urban environment. Wider determinants lead to poor and unequal health outcomes here. Through our partnership with the UKPRP-funded ActEarly consortium and research with community organisations Tower Hamlets has an emerging track record of research collaborations, providing a strong base and fertile ground to strengthen our research system.

Vision, Aims and Objectives: Health Determinants Research Collaboration (HDRC) Tower Hamlets will make the borough a ‘go to’ place to conduct high quality, collaborative, impactful health determinants research, with a strong culture of research-enabled decisions and understanding of the value of contributing to research.

Tower Hamlets HDRC's five objectives are to: (1) strengthen collaborations between the council, universities, our voluntary and community sector and residents; (2) build infrastructure to facilitate high-quality research; (3) embed a culture of research-informed decisions and prioritisation of research; (4) build capacity across partner organisations and our communities; (5) share our learning widely, to strengthen others’ research systems and evidence-based action on wider determinants.

Approach and key deliverables: The HDRC will sit at the core of the council’s structure, accountable to the Chief Executive and Tower Hamlets Partnership. Its work will be structured around five workstreams aligned to these objectives.

• Workstream 1 will develop research collaborations. It will establish a Collaborative Research Board (CRB), Theme-specific Research Collaborations (TRCs) and a joint business development function linking the council and local universities. Proactive in-reach to the VCS, and co-production work will support public involvement.

• Workstream 2 will deliver collaborative infrastructure: accessible, linked data; a streamlined process of approvals; a strengthened cohort of community researchers; and research active settings that engage schools, workplaces and housing associations in research.

• Workstream 3 will develop culture and practice. A research strategy aligned to the Tower Hamlets Partnership will set shared priorities for the borough. Proactive support will help decision-makers to appraise and apply research. An independent evaluation will capture the benefit of applied research and of the HDRC.

• Workstream 4 will focus on capacity building for research among staff, academics and our residents: creating career development pathways and opportunities for two-way collaborative learning.

• Workstream 5 will lead dissemination. It will build a Research Collaboration Hub to enable two-way engagement in the HDRC, and a proactive plan to share our learning on how to become research-enabled and how to take evidence-based action on similar health determinants. Impact

The HDRC will improve our understanding of the most cost-effective ways to tackle health determinants. It will create stronger research collaborations and a culture in which policies and practice are informed by research and routinely evaluated and we will share our learning to enable others to do the same. The investment will enable the council and partners to support and use research and build a sustainable model.

We will see an increase in strategically aligned collaborative research and research funding around health determinants in Tower Hamlets in which our communities will be fully involved.