Building an international beacon for research and innovation in tackling poor health outcomes and inequalities in South Tees

VISION: For South Tees to be an international beacon for research and innovation in tackling poor health outcomes and inequalities.

BACKGROUND: The health of people in South Tees is generally worse than England averages. Because the South Tees LAs do so much jointly, we see sharing a HDRC as an asset and advantage. MISSION AIMS - To create a sustainable and inclusive economy to maximise health and reduce inequalities - Give every child the best start in life

- Enable all children, young people and adults to maximise their capabilities and control over their lives

AIM 1: To build capacity and capability across both Councils to actively (and routinely) participate, use and develop research to inform innovation in practice and deliver real and sustainable impacts to population health A1: To increase research capacity and capability through a dedicated research infrastructure

A2: To embed an inclusive and sustainable research culture across South Tees, through effective leadership, strategy and governance

A3: To develop a global dissemination strategy to support evidence-base development and wider replication of our HDRC approach AIM 2: To increase the amount of research investment in South Tees in relation to determinants of health

B.1: To develop a multi-sector research partnership to increase scope and potential of our research to deliver real health impact and drive local research intensity B.2: To commission an independent evaluation of our HDRC to support the potential for place-based research partnerships B.3: To create a 10-year research investment programme to create sustained investment in research

AIM 3: To harness the anchor potential of key research contributors to build inclusive and sustainable economies.

C1: To develop a cross-partnership Community-Based Research Programme to build inclusive and sustainable research capacity and use research as a tool to support community health building C2: To build ‘research literacy’ in targeted communities through a ‘routes to research’ approach in education

C3: To develop recruitment policies that create inclusive and diverse pipelines into research roles and support long-term career progression

KEY DELIVERABLES: Recruitment of ‘research workforce and culture change team’; establishment of a cross-organisational research strategy and shared governance framework (including a VCSE consortium agreement) and development of a 10-year health determinant research investment strategy.

COLLABORATIONS/PARTNERSHIPS: The work will be led by South Tees in collaboration with Teesside University and organisations across South Tees including health, social care, criminal justice, education and VCSE.

TIMELINE AND MILESTONES FOR DELIVERY: Key milestones include investing in a dedicated culture-change team (Year 1); Developing senior-level research advocates across our respective organisations (Year 1); developing an ambitious workforce strategy to embed research across our organisation; developing a cross-organisational research strategy (by second year); creating joint planning and long-term funding arrangements (ongoing); Building a bank of community-researchers (ongoing).

ANTICIPATED IMPACT AND DISSEMINATION: We intend to work with partners and communities to move research closer to policy and practice. The impact will be an improvement in the health and wellbeing of our communities. We will use a variety of dissemination approaches relevant to the target audience