Title: Building an international beacon for research and innovation in tackling poor health outcomes and inequalities in South Tees
Funder: Department of Health and Social Care

Abstract: Finding out what people need to make their lives better is important. Especially in places like South Tees which has been hit by the loss of jobs such as steelmaking and where there are lots of people without work or living in poverty. We realise that how we make thing better is hard. Basing decisions on proof of what works takes skills, time and money. Some parts of the local Councils are able to create and use evidence to improve what they know. Some parts however don’t know or can’t do it. Our work has shown that workers say that they don’t have the time, funding or confidence to get involved in research. They also don’t see how it would help them. To solve this, we are asking for money to create a research system that helps our colleagues to get past these challenges. This will involve creating new jobs and training to support our staff to improve how they use evidence, which we know will help to make our services and places better for local people and communities. Working with colleagues and those living locally, we have developed a vision, aims, objectives and a number of key missions. These will help change the way the Councils use evidence, supporting all of our staff to improve their work. It will also work with the teams that support children and adults and finally the part that manages how our area looks and feels (like our buildings and parks). We think that working with these teams will help us to improve things for our people. A very important part of our work will be to include lots of people in making these changes happen. We need people in other organisations like Hospitals to be involved. We also know that local people know who best know what it is like to live in Middlesbrough or Redcar and Cleveland. Everyone can bring something special to our work. Together with the local University, we will create a special website that we are calling a portal where we can all share ideas and meet new people to help us. We think this will make things better locally. This will also allow us to ask for more money so that we can continue to make things better for local people and communities. Our portal will let us include people who work for other agencies like the Police and Charities so we can explore what else we can do together. It will also let us share things such as courses that people can do to learn new skills around research and be a place where we can meet experts from the University. It will list all of our current work so that everyone knows what we are doing. From work that we’ve already done, we know that local people and communities are excited to be included in creating our research system. They gave us clear ideas on how they would like to be involved. To make sure that this happens, we will take these ideas and speak with communities right from the start, as the work happens over the first five years and then after that. In summary, our vision is that South Tees will become an international beacon for research and innovation in tackling poor health outcomes and inequalities.

Lay abstract: VISION: For South Tees to be an international beacon for research and innovation in tackling poor health outcomes and inequalities. BACKGROUND: The health of people in South Tees is generally worse than England averages. Because the South Tees LAs do so much jointly, we see sharing a HDRC as an asset and advantage. MISSION AIMS - To create a sustainable and inclusive economy to maximise health and reduce inequalities - Give every child the best start in life - Enable all children, young people and adults to maximise their capabilities and control over their lives AIM 1: To build capacity and capability across both Councils to actively (and routinely) participate, use and develop research to inform innovation in practice and deliver real and sustainable impacts to population health A1: To increase research capacity and capability through a dedicated research infrastructure A2: To embed an inclusive and sustainable research culture across South Tees, through effective leadership, strategy and governance A3: To develop a global dissemination strategy to support evidence-base development and wider replication of our HDRC approach AIM 2: To increase the amount of research investment in South Tees in relation to determinants of health B.1: To develop a multi-sector research partnership to increase scope and potential of our research to deliver real health impact and drive local research intensity B.2: To commission an independent evaluation of our HDRC to support the potential for place-based research partnerships B.3: To create a 10-year research investment programme to create sustained investment in research AIM 3: To harness the anchor potential of key research contributors to build inclusive and sustainable economies. C1: To develop a cross-partnership Community-Based Research Programme to build inclusive and sustainable research capacity and use research as a tool to support community health building C2: To build ‘research literacy’ in targeted communities through a ‘routes to research’ approach in education C3: To develop recruitment policies that create inclusive and diverse pipelines into research roles and support long-term career progression KEY DELIVERABLES: Recruitment of ‘research workforce and culture change team’; establishment of a cross-organisational research strategy and shared governance framework (including a VCSE consortium agreement) and development of a 10-year health determinant research investment strategy. COLLABORATIONS/PARTNERSHIPS: The work will be led by South Tees in collaboration with Teesside University and organisations across South Tees including health, social care, criminal justice, education and VCSE. TIMELINE AND MILESTONES FOR DELIVERY: Key milestones include investing in a dedicated culture-change team (Year 1); Developing senior-level research advocates across our respective organisations (Year 1); developing an ambitious workforce strategy to embed research across our organisation; developing a cross-organisational research strategy (by second year); creating joint planning and long-term funding arrangements (ongoing); Building a bank of community-researchers (ongoing). ANTICIPATED IMPACT AND DISSEMINATION: We intend to work with partners and communities to move research closer to policy and practice. The impact will be an improvement in the health and wellbeing of our communities. We will use a variety of dissemination approaches relevant to the target audience

Research activity codes: 3.5 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (PREVENTION)
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE