October 2021

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

Fourteenth meeting: Tuesday 19th October 2021

Attendees

  • Anne Johnson (chair)

  • Lucy Chappell (DHSC CSA)

  • Philippa Hemmings EPSRC

  • Fiona Watt MRC

  • Joe McNamara MRC

  • Sophie Hawkesworth (Wellcome)

  • Michael Bowdery Welsh Government

  • Andrew Fraser Scottish Government

  • Janice Bailee Northern Ireland Public Health Agency

  • Rachel Conner DHSC (secretariat)

  • Charlotte Miller DHSC (secretariat)

Apologies

  • Joy Todd ESRC

Decisions and actions


Welcome

  1. Lord Kamall is the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Technology, Innovation and Life Sciences) and his remit includes research.

  2. It was recently announced that RT Hon Professor Lord Kakkar will be the new chair of OSCHR.


Minutes of last meeting and updates on actions


  1. The NIHR Public Health Research programme recently launched the Population Health Career Scientist Award and the Health Determinant Research Collaborations (HDRCs). It was welcomed that both of these calls are UK wide.

  2. It is also important to work with industry partners and the NIHR is committed to exploring what collaborations with industry could look like.


SCHOPR future priorities

  1. Priorities across funders included:

  • Health inequalities and wider determinants

  • Dementia

  • Tobacco

  • Obesity

  1. Other priorities for some funders included climate change, obesity and air pollution.

  2. Anne chaired a working group for the Obesity Health Alliance, which led to the publication of a strategy report.

  3. The Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society recently published a report: tackling climate change mitigation and human health together


Health inequalities and wider determinants

  1. It was noted that with health inequalities there is a risk of focusing on downstream factors rather than upstream factors/wider determinants.

  2. Another challenge with health inequalities is that we are good at describing them, but could improve at conducting research, building the evidence base and conducting activities to reduce inequalities.

  3. We could look at what we know already about health inequalities and test interventions and in parallel ask what we should be doing now for all existing research to mitigate amplifying these inequalities.


Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)

  1. There are two areas where SCHOPR could collectively add value

  • A framework for measuring EDI in public health research with collective principles

  • Driving forward the Social Determinants of Health/wider determinants work has to be across funders.

  1. It was noted that it’s not just about conducting research in this area, but also as funders and researchers what are we doing strategically in our processes of funding research to improve EDI. It is important for funders to work together on EDI and measuring statistics.

  2. It would be helpful to describe where we are right now in terms of EDI and health inequalities and where we should be going as funders.


Dementia

  1. Dementia is a core area in the OLS vision and MRC also spend a lot of money on this area.

  2. We should be focusing on early diagnosis and treatment and the 12 modifiable risk factors for dementia.

Systems thinking

  1. The AMS and Canadian Academy of Health Sciences have published the reported: Systems-based approaches in public health. The idea for this work originally came from SCHOPR and Wellcome funded the work.


Update on OHID and UKHSA (CSA)

  1. Jeanelle de Gruchy is DCMO and head of OHID and Jonathan Marron is Director General in OHID. Currently, there is a large focus on developing the organisational structure.