Imperial renews membership of £25 million NIHR School for Public Health Research

Imperial’s membership of NIHR School for Public Health Research renewed for further five years following £25 million investment.

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has awarded a further £25 million of funding to the School for Public Health Research (SPHR), a partnership between nine leading academic centres including Imperial College London, which will run from April 2022 until 2027.

Established in 2012, the next round of the SPHR will advance and extend its current research programmes on public mental health; children, young people and families; and places and communities.

The SPHR aims to build the evidence base for effective public health practice by bringing together England’s leading public health research expertise. The SPHR conducts applied public health research to increase the volume and quality of evidence on cost-effective interventions and places particular attention on reducing health inequalities. It supports local public health practitioners, policy makers and members of the public to engage with research and seek out research evidence to inform public health decisions.

Imperial’s School of Public Health has been a member in the NIHR SPHR since 2017 and the new cycle will be led by Professors Christopher Millett, Sonia Saxena, Franco Sassi and Drs Eszter Vamos and Sean Beevers. Current SPHR research projects at Imperial include assessing options for introducing road user charging in local areas, understanding the nature of relationships between companies that produce unhealthy products and governments, evaluation of nutritional welfare policies and harnessing data to reduce asthma in early life and improve health in schools. 

Professor Christopher Millett, NIHR Professor of Public Health and Lead Investigator for SPHR at Imperial, said: “We are delighted to have our membership of the NIHR School for Public Health Research renewed for a further five years. The importance of prevention and public health research has never been more apparent, and it is wonderful to see this £25m commitment and the extension of the SPHR. We look forward to continuing our research with both new and existing partners.”

Dr Eszter Vamos, Clinical Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Health said: "It is a great privilege to continue working with excellent previous and new members of the SPHR family, practitioners and our communities over the next 5 years to strengthen the evidence for public health practice."

World-class public health research

The SPHR will continue to be led by Professor Ashley Adamson, Director of Fuse, the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health and be joined by two new members in the University of Exeter and a consortium of the Universities of Birmingham, Keele and Warwick.

Members of the NIHR School for Public Health Research 2022-2027:

• University of Sheffield
• University of Cambridge
• University of Birmingham collaboration with the Universities of Warwick and Keele (PHRESH) – new member
• London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• University of Bristol
• Liverpool and Lancaster Universities Collaboration for Public Health (LiLaC)
• Imperial College London
• Fuse, the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health (Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside Universities)
• University of Exeter – new member