NIHRDataInsights/HRCSData huggingface dataset:
Title: Nature's Way: Co-Creating Methods for Innovating Nature-based Solutions for Public Health and Green Recovery in a Post-COVID World
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council

Abstract: This project aims to co-create Nature-based Solutions (NBS) knowledge to empower communities, organisations, and individuals to innovate NBS as alternatives for healthcare and societal resilience following the COVID-19 pandemic. It will take a human-centred design approach to enable wider collaboration and to integrate otherwise 'siloed' knowledge and expertise. This project is a joint-effort between the Royal College of Art, the University of Sheffield, Walsall Housing Group, Bradford City Council, Shared Assets, HAS technology, National Association of Voluntary and Community Action, and Intelligent Health. NBS are actions, e.g. ecological restoration, that work with nature to help address societal challenges. In this proposal, it refers to social innovation actions utilising green space, parks and lakes, for the purpose of health and wellbeing. It is based on the evidence that regular contact with nature enhances physical health and mental wellbeing, and creates social benefits. It expands the concept of 'green prescription' to include wider communities and public beyond patients and GPs. The main deliverables of the project are: - An integrated method supported with training webinars enabling people to innovate and improve cost-effective NBS; - An open innovation platform facilitating NBS development using the integrated method, to link available resources and different stakeholders including commissioners, providers, agencies and voluntary community action groups and individuals; - The outcome of the pilots - NBS concepts - will be implemented by Walsall Housing Group and Bradford City Council to create immediate benefit to vulnerable people in these two areas, building upon existing approaches in the creation of service directories; - One journal paper, two conference papers to examine the role of design thinking in NBS innovation.


Research activity codes: 5.8 COMPLEMENTARY;7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: HEartS Professional: The Health, Economic and Social impact of COVID-19 on PROFESSIONALs in the ARTs
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council

Abstract: The arts and culture sectors play a vital role in connecting and inspiring communities. In the COVID-19 crisis, these sectors are also among the most disrupted, with performances, exhibitions and exchanges of all kinds all but halted. The arts and cultural economies, and those who work within them, face unprecedented challenges and uncertainty. HEartS Professional addresses this by investigating the health, wellbeing and financial impact of the crisis on professionals in the arts and culture sectors, providing knowledge, leadership, advocacy and new ways forward when and where they are needed most. The project surveys arts and culture professionals to determine precisely where challenges lie and how they evolve as the crisis unfolds, responding to those challenges with targeted investigations. It celebrates innovative responses to the crisis and shares examples of good practice. Moreover, it explores how digital tools can be quickly designed, adapted and implemented to ensure that culture and arts professionals have available new methods to sustain their practices and serve their communities.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS;7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Modelling and Supporting Recovery of the UK's Experience Economy: Enhancing Audience Resilience and Engagement via Digital Methods
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council

Abstract: This proposal seeks to reconceptualise consumer value and business resilience in the UK's creative and visitor sectors and their value chain (from VFX companies, theatres and museums to festivals, catering and accommodation providers), collectively referred to as the experience economy. With a value of over £300bn, the health of the experience economy maintains the UK's status as the world's seventh most visited country and producer of quality creative experiences. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many experience economy operators in the creative sector had begun experimenting with online content. Over the course of the pandemic, the range of these offers has expanded, opening up new audiences and sustaining existing ones. For many businesses, the digital or online 'experience' comprises mainly recorded and distributed content, usually provided free. Experiences are heavily dependent on evoking a sense of place. Therefore, at a time when access to physical places is restricted, there is a risk that online material fails to provide an effective proxy for the experience itself. While proving popular during the pandemic (see bibliography), existing products arguably offer limited additional experiential or business benefits. Convening expertise in experience design, post-production technology, games, visitor economy and place-making, this project will: - support experience providers in developing online and digital products which enhance their physical counterparts. - investigate modes of delivery and monetisation, as well as the policy instruments required to maintain adjacent place-based reputations and offers. - produce tools to support experience economy businesses' immediate post-COVID-19 regeneration, including scenario modelling, enabling a robust economic recovery.


Research activity codes: 8.2 HEALTH AND WELFARE ECONOMICS
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: An Urgent Review of Single Source Procurement During the Pandemic: Recommendations for Best Practice and Reform
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council

Abstract: Public procurement has played a vital role in the COVID-19 response with over 1 billion items of equipment sourced across the UK. However, procurement has not been subject to rigorous analysis. Ordinarily, contracts must be awarded following an open competion. Exceptionally, UK law permits awards to a single supplier without a competition in cases of extreme urgency to minimise delay in delivery. Awards must still be published and clear justifications provided. Yet, hundreds of thousands of contracts have been awarded without full visibility. Further, contracting authorities face immense ongoing pressure to source quickly; suppliers have not been able to access all opportunities; and others have opportunistically charged high prices or not delivered. This project, led by the world-leading Public Procurement Research Group (PPRG) at the University of Nottingham in strategic partnership with the Department of Health and Social Care and the Open Contracting Partnership, will conduct an urgent investigation into single sourcing during the pandemic. The aim is to develop better organisational planning, ensure legal compliance, achieve value for money, and reduce corruption risks in ongoing procurement during the pandemic. The project also aims to lay the foundation for lasting reform which is responsive to a new global political, economic and social reality. To meet these aims, the project objectives will be to: (1) collect and collate evidence of single sourcing through contract data and stakeholder interviews during a defined period; (2) develop a best-practice "toolkit" for immediate use by contracting authorities and suppliers; and (3) provide a "real-time" comprehensive review of single sourcing, comprising analysis of the evidence and recommendations for policy and legislative reform to inform imminent public inquiries and review exercises.


Research activity codes: 8.2 HEALTH AND WELFARE ECONOMICS
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Pandemic Review: Rights and Accountability in COVID-19
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council

Abstract: The UK's response to COVID-19 significantly limits rights through a combination of law, regulation, guidance, and policing practice emanating from Westminster, devolved administrations, and police forces. While the UK's human rights obligation to protect the right to life mandates an effective response to the pandemic, the nature and extent of that response carries the risk that rights will permanently be undermined. Review of the pandemic response is key to limiting that risk. It is a critical component of ensuring accountability and legitimacy, which in turn underpins public trust and compliance with pandemic regulations. In order to be effective, review must (i) recognise the wide range of rights-related impacts of the response, (ii) engage substantively with questions of disproportionate impact by characteristics such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status, and (iii) be able to influence government responses by holding the state accountable for rights (non-) compliance and insisting that rights-limitations are temporary, proportionate, and fully rolled back once no longer necessary. This project will monitor and strengthen pandemic review by establishing a 'COVID-19 review observatory', which will document and analyse the extent, nature and effectiveness of (legal and political) review of the impact on rights. It will produce 'report cards' for pandemic reviews, and feed back to and in to review mechanisms in order to strengthen their accountability functions. The project will thus strengthen review mechanisms' contribution to state accountability and the restoration of rights normalcy 'after COVID-19'.


Research activity codes: 8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Supporting Healthcare Professionals Through Covid-19: Understanding How Arts-based Methods Can Support Non-verbal Communication
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council

Abstract: Effective, clear and compassionate verbal and non-verbal communication has been shown to be essential to good patient care, as well as part of an efficient and cost-effective healthcare system (McDonald, 2016). Since the Covid-19 outbreak, communication between patients and healthcare professionals has altered, with healthcare professionals facing new challenges: adapting to the introduction of widespread use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), video-call consultations, social distancing and limited physical touch. Healthcare professionals have described the impact of wearing PPE as isolating, exhausting and impeding communication, articulating the urgent need for research in this area which has been reiterated by proactive requests for support from institutions such as University College of London Hospitals (UCLH). Through Clod Ensemble's Performing Medicine programme WILLSON (Principal Investigator) provides sector-leading interventions in healthcare education using performative techniques from non-verbal artistic disciplines, such as dance and physical theatre, to enable healthcare professionals to gain a deeper understanding of how they communicate non-verbally. These techniques have been proven to enhance self-care and communication with patients and colleagues (Osman et al., 2018). This proposed research programme of interviews and workshops will investigate the impact of arts-based interventions on the training and support of healthcare professionals and medical students with regard to the non-verbal communication challenges presented by Covid-19. Undertaken by a unique, multidisciplinary partnership between arts organisations, NHS trusts and academics who have been collaborating for decades, this project will create, test, scale and disseminate online and in-person resources to support healthcare professionals and medical students.


Research activity codes: 7.3 MANAGEMENT AND DECISION MAKING;8.1 ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Minority ethnic older adults’ perception of COVID-19 public health campaigns
Funder: The British Academy

Abstract: According to the Office for National Statistics (2020), minority ethnic groups faced the greatest risk from COVID-19. In addition, the greater risk is said to be driven by factors such as living arrangements and jobs rather than pre-existing health conditions (Davis, 2020). Within national vaccination programmes in the UK so far, reported vaccine uptake has been lower in areas with a higher proportion of minority ethnic populations (Gov.uk, 2021b). It is therefore critical to better understand minority ethnic groups’ responses to, and their perceptions of, COVID-19 related public health messaging. By adopting a qualitative approach from a multidisciplinary perspective, the current research aims: first, to explore how persuasive COVID-19 related public health campaigns are for minority ethnic older adults; and second, to explore how relevant these campaigns are for minority ethnic older adults.


Research activity codes: 7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Teaching arrangements, time use, and mental health among UK undergraduate students
Funder: The British Academy

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified higher education debates about how undergraduate teaching arrangements affect students’ mental health and their perceived value of a university education. I will contribute to these debates by documenting how changes in teaching arrangements affect UK undergraduate students’ lifestyle patterns, mental health, and their ‘student experience’ as universities transition back to in-person teaching. To do so, I will conduct four cross-sectional surveys of UK undergraduate students over the next two academic years. This time period provides a unique opportunity to study the relationship between teaching arrangements and student outcomes, because we will see substantial variation in teaching arrangements, ranging from fully online to fully in-person. I will use this variation across degree subjects and time to see how non-academic outcomes vary with teaching arrangements and students’ socio-economic characteristics. This evidence will be crucial for longer-term policy and university-level decisions about methods of higher education delivery.


Research activity codes: 7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: All hands on deck? Organisational hybridity and the voluntary response to critical shortages of PPE during the Covid-19 pandemic in England
Funder: The British Academy

Abstract: This study will explore how a variety of individuals and organisations responded spontaneously to the critical shortage of personal protective equipment for front-line workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. It will identify the different ways in which people across private, public and voluntary sectors and the informal world came together in various combinations to address this urgent need. It will develop a typology of the key kinds of organisational arrangement through which need was addressed and use interviews with key informants in a selection of different settings to identify some of the ways in which these hybrid organisational forms operated and assess the benefits and limitations of the different approaches. This will not only help us to understand how the community could best respond to future crises but also identify some of the ways in hybrid organisational forms might play a bigger role in meeting social need.


Research activity codes: 8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Covid-19 and the Dynamics of Group Blame: Lessons Learnt and Future Implications
Funder: The British Academy

Abstract: As with other crises before, the Covid-19 pandemic has created fear and discord within societies. In response to this perceived threat there has been a search for blame and responsibility. As the pandemic has progressed, the actors and attributes of blame have evolved. Early on, greater attention was paid to the origins of the virus. As new variants emerged, blame was ascribed to the places where they were first identified. Following the implementation of successful vaccine programmes in higher-income countries, blame has also been attributed to communities where vaccine uptake has been lower. The consequences of blame are social stigma, discriminatory behaviour and marginalisation. This pilot project seeks to understand how UK media discourses on Covid-19 have attributed blame to particular groups and how this intersects with the way the public perceive blame for Covid-19.


Research activity codes: 8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: The impact of Covid-19 lockdowns on body weight of adolescents
Funder: The British Academy

Abstract: This project aims to estimate the causal effect of the accessibility to food outlets providing highly caloric food (e.g., fast food) on the weight of adolescents in the United Kingdom. We do this by using independent variation in the accessibility to these food outlets in their living environments, caused by Covid-19 lockdown restrictions and their gradual relaxations. Our sample will be drawn from the three waves of the new Covid-19 survey of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) participants, covering the period between May 2020 and March 2021. We will link the information from this Covid survey to the data from the MCS main survey and of locations of food premises. The use of the linked individual-level longitudinal data with a rich set of information on individual, family, and neighbourhood characteristics before and during the pandemic makes the study unique, enabling us to estimate the above causal effect to inform policy.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS;3.3 NUTRITION AND CHEMOPREVENTION
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Rethinking Vulnerability to COVID-19 Lockdowns in Gulu, Uganda
Funder: The British Academy

Abstract: Lockdowns have been central to the COVID-19 response in much of Africa, and look likely to continue on-and-off for months to come. Concerns have been raised about lockdowns' negative social and economic impact; there is a presssing need for careful research on that impact, with special attention to the hidden costs borne by the most vulnerable. Simultaneously, research is needed on how communities facing COVID-19 lockdowns are developing innovative, collective, ways of ensuring livelihoods and charting paths towards modes of communal well-being amidst the pandemic and in its wake. Our project, a collaboration between Gulu University, Uganda, and Cambridge University, will use participatory methods to map the impact of the lockdown in Gulu Distict and explore creative community responses 'beyond coping'. We focus in particular on how youth are negotiating the rural-urban interface and on lockdown's differential impact upon women. Our results will feed directly into district and national policy.


Research activity codes: 8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Phase 1 COVID-19 Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing - National Core Study
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: The Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing National Core Study will improve understanding of COVID-19 infection risk factors, examine the physical and mental health consequences of asymptomatic to hospitalised cases, and assess the impact of population scale mitigation policy. We will unite distinct, but complementary, longitudinal studies already engaged in COVID-19 research, including UK representative population and hospitalised cohorts, household panel surveys, and national primary care registries. These will be enriched with health and administrative data linkage. Linkage, self-reporting and repeat serological assessment will allow greater precision in case assignment. This collective resource will be mined by a consortium of experienced analysts linked to these resources to provide rapid answers to existing and emerging priority research questions. These include physical and mental health impacts and socioeconomic adversity of those who have had COVID-19 infection, evolving impacts on health and socioeconomic inequalities, and uptake, safety and effectiveness of vaccination and determinants of responses. Our outputs will include briefing notes as well as scientific reports in order to optimise policy influence. Phase 1 funding will: 1. Establish a centralised, responsive resource linking data assets from a diverse range of longitudinal population studies with health, social and environmental records, with harmonised governance for processing and research interrogation. 2. Inform population health and social policy by providing evidence, both proactively and in response to customers, of the medium to long term consequences of infection, and of policies to control the pandemic 3. Establish a cadre of highly skilled big data scientists - To support this a further award is made for an additional sum of £74,000 to provide infrastructure to the secondees awarded under the Using data to improve public health: COVID-19 secondment. These additional funds are to be utilised to enable the secondees, where required, to purchase assets in support of their work and this could include but not limited to, scientific and technical software, training courses, data access and travel and subsistence.


Research activity codes: 2.4 SURVEILLANCE AND DISTRIBUTION;2.6 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (AETIOLOGY);8.5 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (HEALTH SERVICES)
Health categories: INFECTION;GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;MENTAL HEALTH