Health promotion, policy and practice (HPPP)

There are two aims within the Health Promotion, Policy, and Practice (HPPP) research area. The first is to foster and support a collaborative and empowering environment for the development, implementation, and dissemination of a balanced portfolio of high quality research and evaluation projects at local, national, and European/international levels related to all areas of health promotion, policy, and practice. The second is to develop research capacity and skills in evidence-based health promotion, policy, and practice through research-led teaching and the co-production of knowledge across complementary professional and academic disciplines.

Our research is underpinned strongly by a commitment to making a difference or a social impact often around social justice and inclusion, and tackling disadvantage as it relates to health. Much of our research is collaborative, participatory, and based broadly on the settings approach to health promotion. The settings approach emphasises a key shift away from a reductionist and pathogenic focus on individual health problems, risk factors, and linear causality. Instead, such an approach focuses more on salutogenic perspectives to the creation of positive health assets including supportive environments and social conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age. Healthy settings are where people actively use and shape the environment within larger social (including global) structures.

We are therefore interested in research that explores how settings can create or solve problems relating to health, and how they can function as complex and inter-linked systems which can impact (positively and negatively) on health behaviours and status. We are also interested in evaluating interventions, actions, and/or policies through the use of mixed methodologies that can deepen our understanding of how and why different interventions work in particular contexts and at different times, and in different places.

Research themes

The Health Promotion Policy and Practice research area is characterised by six research themes, which reflect the work that its members have undertaken and/or are currently undertaking:

Sexual health promotion and HIV - Nigel Sherriff and Natalie Edelman
Healthy public policy, and health inequalities - Nigel Sherriff
Healthy settings - Alexander Sawyer
Obesity prevention, physical activity, and nutrition - Carol Williams
Capacity building in health promotion and public health - Alexander Sawyer
Evaluation and monitoring in health promotion and public health - Nigel Sherriff

We are interested in all topics of research relating to health promotion theory, policy, and practice, especially with an international focus and underpinned by a strong social justice agenda. In our work, we see health promotion as being the social and political process of enabling people to increase control over and improve their health. This is achieved through actions aimed at strengthening individual awareness and skill; supporting/facilitating individuals in changing their individual behaviours; empowering communities and influencing social, organisational, political, and economic conditions that support good health and wellbeing.

Sexual health promotion and HIV

Sexual health promotion is a key public health and health promotion issue at local, national, European, and international level. In this research theme, we are interested in all areas of sexual health promotion, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), as well as unintended pregnancy and positive sexual relationships. We see sexual health as a “state of physical, mental and social wellbeing in relation to sexuality that requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence” (WHO, 2014). Research in this theme currently includes (but is not limited to):

gay businesses as settings for HIV prevention
LGBT issues including gender identity
tackling homophobia
HIV surveillance
HIV and STI sampling and testing
associations between mental health, sexual health and sexual health service engagement.

Healthy public policy, and health inequalities

Healthy public policy and a focus on the social and wider determinants of health inequalities (the ‘cause of causes’) are key components of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (WHO, 1986). In this research theme we are interested in policies designed specifically to promote health, as well as those policies that may not directly focus on health (e.g. education, housing, transport) but that are acknowledged to have a health impact. We are also interested in research that adopts a strong social justice agenda exploring issues of exclusion, inequity, and vulnerability.

Of particular interest (but not limited to) are the following areas:

lifecourse approaches to tackling the health gradient
evaluation of healthy public policies aimed at reducing health inequalities
social justice and vulnerable groups/populations (fathers, young people, MSM)
exploring the contribution of health services to health inequalities (causes and reductions), and the future capacity of health services to reduce health inequalities
determining whether changes in health status impact upon socio-economic position, and how to mitigate any adverse impact
development of psychological, sociological, and other theoretical views to understand the structural and political drivers underlying the unequal distribution of the social determinants of health.

Healthy settings

The settings approach is based on a socio-ecological model of health and recognises that health is determined not only by individual lifestyle and ‘health’ services, but by wider social, economic, environmental, organisational and cultural circumstances and the complexity of their interactions. Its origins lie within the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Health For All movement (WHO, 1980, 1981) which was instrumental in the development of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (WHO, 1986). This latter charter continues to provide a key framework for health promotion and especially the settings approach, and has led to a series of WHO-initiated and endorsed, settings based networks many of which have gone on to become global movements, with networks operating at national, regional and global levels, with shared underpinning concepts, principles and values driving their activities.

Within this research theme, we are therefore interested in research, monitoring, and evaluation relating to the effectiveness of healthy settings particularly (but not limited to)the following areas:

healthy cities
health-promoting universities
healthy workplaces
health-promoting hospitals.

Obesity prevention, physical activity, and nutrition

Our expanding waistlines and hours spent sitting down are now top of public health agendas nationally (UK Department of Health 2011), and internationally (WHO, 2014). This sedentary and over-consuming way of life brings other complications, ranging from chronic conditions such as diabetes Type II, poor mental health and low vitamin D, to increases in pollution, greenhouse gasses, more waste and social isolation. In this research theme we are interested in the interface between individual and group behaviours, social norms and the wider food and activity environment that can make it easy or almost impossible for individuals and communities to be active, have a healthy weight, and good nutrition.

Research topics of interest include:

increasing physical activity and reducing sedentary behaviours
influences on satiety
engaging fathers in supporting breastfeeding
infant and toddler feeding including baby-led feeding
lifecourse approaches to healthy eating focusing on life transitions
food labelling, pricing and presentation
evaluation of healthy food interventions.

Capacity building in health promotion and public health

Over the last three decades the concept of ‘capacity building’ has been introduced into the field of health promotion as a (relatively new) focus on the requirements for successful implementation of health promotion and/or public health programmes and/or interventions. Capacity building can be described broadly as any action that aims at developing resources, skills, and requirements that are needed in order to implement health promotion activities.

Within this research theme, we are interested in research, theory development, and practice related to capacity building in health promotion at local, national, European and international levels. Of particular interest (but not limited to) are the following areas:

capacity building to reduce health inequalities
conceptual development for building effectiveness within health promotion practice
competency development for the health promotion and public health workforce
training and development.

Evaluation and monitoring in health promotion and public health

Evaluation in health promotion fundamentally concerns assessment of the extent to which an action achieves a valued outcome. In most cases there is also value placed on the process by which these outcomes are achieved. The Ottawa Charter for health promotion identifies both valued outcomes and valued processes in health promotion. In this Research theme we are therefore interested in the development and use of evaluation research designs, particularly those informed by ‘realist principles’, which are able to capture the complexity of health promotion activity and in doing so, assess both the outcome achieved and the process by which it is achieved. In addition we are available for commissioned evaluation (rapid, mid, and longer term) of health promotion and public health policies and practices (e.g. interventions/programmes) at local, national, European, and international levels. If you wish to discuss your evaluation requirements with us please contact us.