January 2021

Strategic co-ordination for health of the public research – OSCHR sub board

Twelfth meeting: Tuesday 27th April 2021

Attendees

• Anne Johnson (chair)

• Chris Whitty NIHR/DHSC (From item 8)

• Louise Wood NIHR/DHSC (observer)

• Mary De Silva Wellcome

• Joy Todd ESRC

• Philippa Hemmings EPSRC

• Joe McNamara MRC (for Fiona Watt)

• Michael Bowdery Welsh Government

• Andrew Fraser Scottish Government

• Janice Bailee Northern Ireland Public Health Agency

• Rachel Conner DHSC (secretariat)

• Charlotte Miller DHSC (secretariat)

• Jenny Harries Deputy CMO DHSC (From item 9)

• Lucy Chappell NIHR Research Professor in Obstetrics at King's College London (observer)

Decisions and actions

Minutes of last meeting and updates on actions

1. The note of the meeting held on January 2021 was agreed to be an accurate report of the meeting.

SCHOPR stocktake of activities

2. Anne will be going to OSCHR in June where she will talk about SCHOPR’s activities and future plans.

3. Completed SCHOPR activities

• Public health research principles and goals

• CMO visited 16 Local Authorities (LAs) to understand opportunities and barriers for LAs engaging in research

• Roundtable with LAs which fed into development of £12m package on prevention research

• Transdisciplinary fellowships, chair attended UKRPR funders group to propose scheme.

• SCHOPR website published

• NIHR Public Health Operational Group (PHOG) established

• Helen Walters’ paper on ‘How NIHR can work with local government to increase research activity’ fed into the £12m package

• COVID-19 related activities, each organisation conducted its own activities and some jointly funded calls.

• Public Health reform-Anne discussed proposed changes with DHSC lead for reform and co-director of NIHR

4. Activities in progress

• £12m NIHR package on prevention research which supports LAs to become research active.

• Behaviour change workshop

• Systems thinking in health and social care

5. SCHOPR activities that have not progressed

• Return on investment

• Landscape review

6. Original topics SCHOPR thought were priorities

• SCHOPR agreed priority areas in their first meetings which included mental health, digital health, ageing, multi-morbidities and local authorities. SCHOPR members have addressed some of these priorities.

7. Potential future SCHOPR priorities

• Additional SCHOPR priorities could be systems thinking; developing new methods for public health; intersections between health improvement and health protection; early life and educational settings; wider determinants.

Update on funding landscape – specifically Horizon Europe and ODA

8. There are three main concerns about the funding landscape:

• Cuts in ODA funding for research in low-and middle-income countries where there’s uncertainty if some programmes will continue and concern about loss of trust with international partners.

• Horizon Europe association, where it is unclear if the full estimated cost of £1 billion will be met and to ensure the association doesn’t come out of the research science budget.

• Some medical research charities have budget cuts due to COVID-19, which impacts early career researchers.

Public Health Reforms

9. Public health reforms for health protection and health improvement

• The Chair is in discussion with Jenny Harries, Isabel Oliver and others at PHE about health security. It is less clear where clinical academics will be embedded in the future Office for Health Promotion.

• The Office for Health Promotion (OHP) won’t have all staff in place until 1st October

• The OHP will be roughly the same size of PHE, but with more opportunity to interact with LAs and other departments. The aim of the OHP is to make changes and not just describe problems. The levers in public health are in BEIS, DfT, DEFRA, local government and the treasury.

Roundtable updates

10. Wellcome’s updates

• Wellcome have announced their new research strategy. They will be funding discovery research in any discipline and will focus on three global health challenges- mental health, infectious disease and climate and health. The discovery research remit will focus on research that understands how life works.