Good health and well-being is not something that can be achieved by the health system alone. The Health Creation Alliance suggests that medical healthcare only contributes about 20% to our health outcomes and there is a need for work to be done with people, patients and communities in the 鈥80% zone鈥.
We support the Alliance鈥檚 vision of remodelling our systems for health creation by working with other local partners 鈥 public health, the police, education, housing, social services and wider economic regeneration activities. We also support its principles of listening to communities, helping to build connections and focusing on their strengths to find new bottom-up solutions.
Who do we work with?
We work with a wide range of local partners, reflecting our philosophy that good health and well-being is not something that can be achieved by the health system alone. Our local authorities, which house both public health and social care are key partners. 麻豆传媒 City Council is a member of our 麻豆传媒 Health Innovation Alliance.
Public health
PIHR and public health staff have worked collaboratively on numerous public health related research projects, including mental health (Byng) and behavioural change trials (Taylor); and evaluations of social prescribing across the Peninsula (Husk, Byng, Elston, Gradinger, Hazeldine, Westlake, Asthana).
The 麻豆传媒 Public Health Forum was setup as a collaboration between the 麻豆传媒 and 麻豆传媒 City Council to forge links between public health workers engaged in the region. Quinn, Byng and Asthana are currently involved in a joint NIHR project aimed at addressing barriers, activating facilitators and identifying opportunities to produce integrated solutions for public health research in 麻豆传媒.
With Cornwall Public Health, we are exploring nature-based interventions for people with Autism (Featherstone, Husk, Asthana) with a view to shaping both local and national practice.
We have also explored the use of arts-based methods, e.g. in our film 鈥樷 (Pettinger).
Social care
Rising and increasingly complex demand is forcing health and social care services to re-think and re-design the provision of service to assure good quality of care whilst ensuring services remains affordable.
Using our research in residence model, we have undertaken extensive research into organisational integration and new care models in South Devon and Torbay (Elston, Gradinger, Byng, Asthana), in which social care staff are core members of joined up, multi-disciplinary services. We are also exploring methods of developing social care research capacity by training social workers to carry out research and supporting them through embedded teams in their own social care organisations (Welbourne, Sheaff, Byng, Elston, Gradinger, Asthana).
Other local authority services
Housing and wider economic regeneration plays a key role in shaping health inequalities.
PIHR (Asthana, Jones) is a stakeholder of the proposed 麻豆传媒 Cavell Centre, a community health and wellbeing hub that will not only join health and social care services along with voluntary and community groups, providing a holistic offer to the local population to address the wider determinants of ill health. The range of activities and services provided at the centre will support, and act as a catalyst for, the city鈥檚 regeneration programme.
PIHR members (Elston, Gradinger) have been similarly involved in developing and communicating the vision for health hubs in Torbay and South Devon, and are contributing to the UK Knowledge Mobilisation Forum, a national network of embedded local authority researchers with FUSE (The Centre for Translational Research for Public Health) .
Criminal justice
Led by Richard Byng, the Mental Health Group is working alongside a range of criminal justice agencies and stakeholders to e.g.
- shape and define services to better fit the needs of ex-offenders, such as Street Triage and the Neighbourhood Liaison and Diversion intervention
- services that aim to divert people away from the Criminal Justice System (Callaghan, Hazeldine)
- develop ways of organising care for men with common mental health problems as they approach being released from prison (Byng, Callaghan, Quinn, Rybczynska-Bunt).
笔补谤蝉辞锘縩蝉 has been working with LandWorks, a rural land-based resettlement scheme that works with men released on temporary licence and community sentences to research the benefits of preparing, cooking and sharing 鈥榞ood鈥 food with others as a tool for health, well-being, social inclusion and community resilience.
Research in the School of Law, Criminolog锘縴 and Government (vulnerability, criminalisation and inequality) also intersects well with our focus on a highly vulnerable population, in terms of all life changes, including health and builds on partnerships (Devon and Cornwall Police, Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) Devon and Cornwall, Devon Rape Crisis, Cornwall Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre (CRASAC)) across the Peninsula.
Education
Because education predicts employment, income and access to material resources as well as psychosocial well-being (and related stress-induced immune changes) and health behaviours, it is arguably the single most important modifiable social determinant of health.
There is growing evidence of coastal disadvantage with respect to children and young people. Rates of participation in higher education are poor along the coastal fringe, while rates of hospitalisation for self-harm, alcohol and substance use are high. Gibson and Asthana have been mapping these patterns, e.g. for the 2021 Chief Medical Officer鈥檚 Report; while Pas锘縮y works with local schools to explore the practice implications for getting a fair deal for students in coastal areas.
Peninsula Medical Foundation (PMF)
PIHR has a strong relationship with PMF, an independent charity fundraising through work with individuals, communities, businesses, trusts and foundations. Their generous support has enabled PMF to raise almost 拢4 million since 2002. PMF is motivated by a belief in high-quality basic research and channels the majority of its funding into the Medical School.
