Greater Essex Health Determinants Research Collaboration

There are stark health inequalities across Greater Essex (GE). The difference in life expectancy between our most and least deprived wards is 16-years for women and 22-years for men, reflecting variation in communities’ economic and educational opportunities, and their living conditions, known as the wider determinants of health (WDH). GE councils are committed to tackling WDH but securing change is not easy.

No organisation can make progress working alone, yet the scale and diversity of GE, and the complexity of local public services, make it difficult to define shared priorities and agreed actions.

Research can foster a shared understanding of needs, residents’ priorities, and effective strategies for addressing health inequalities. To play this role, research must be trusted, speak to partners’ concerns, and command attention from those who have the power to implement change. To this end, Essex County Council (ECC), Southend Council, Thurrock Council, University of Essex (UoE), Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and local Healthwatch organisations, will create a Health Determinants Research Collaboration (HDRC). We will:

• establish a team bringing together local authorities and universities to deliver a research programme agreed upon by a Leadership Board comprising Directors of Public Health, leaders from the NHS and GE universities, and members of the public and voluntary sector.

• create an ‘advisory group’ made up of experts in research and health inequalities to support the delivery team and improve the quality of its work.

• develop a Citizens Involvement Forum that will influence the HDRC’s research ideas, work plans, and priorities and ensure we involve underrepresented groups in research. Residents will receive training to enable them to perform these roles. The HDRC will build research capacity and capability across the system and drive a stronger research culture. It will:

• conduct high-quality, inclusive research into the WDH, that is focused on local needs and challenges identified through joint strategic needs assessments and consultation with staff, politicians and residents.

• train professionals to undertake research and use it to inform decision-making. We will work with researchers, senior officials, politicians, future leaders and residents to develop GE's research skillbase; foster a supportive environment for research and win funding for research projects.

• engage with GE professionals, politicians, residents and local government peers across England to drive collaboration around research; secure engagement with HDRC’s research outputs through the creative use of media and ensure that outputs influence policy decisions around the WDH.

Partners across GE support this proposal. It fits with the culture of local public services and builds on key local assets: strong partnership working; mature links with local universities; commitment to residents' involvement and lessons learned in establishing similar shared programmes such as the Essex Centre for Data Analytics.

Local partners have committed to providing time and resource to support the HDRC, including making existing research infrastructure and resident engagement mechanisms available to the HDRC. These commitments show partners’ confidence in our plans, will help maximise the value of NIHR investment and sustain research-informed ways of working across GE over the long-term.