£8m for hospital research project into how environment can affect health

A MAJOR new grant has been awarded to a Yorkshire NHS trust to research how and why population health is affected by local environments.

More than £8m has been awarded to Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to conduct the four-year Healthy Urban Places project from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Population Health Improvement UK initiative. It is one of only four trusts to have awarded grant money from the fund.

The aim of the project is to see how factors in environments such as clean air, housing quality, access to green space, public transport and so on affect people’s health.

It is hoped data gathered will be able to directly influence decisions which improve health outcomes by changing local environments.

It will work with two major ongoing population health studies in Bradford and Liverpool, Born in Bradford and Children Growing Up in Liverpool, which are tracking the health and wellbeing of over 70,000 families in the cities.

Some 12,500 pregnant women were recruited to the Born in Bradford study at Bradford Royal Infirmary between March 2007 and December 2010 to measure health outcomes and the impact of policy on wellbeing.

Director of Born in Bradford, Professor Rosie McEachan is chief investigator and will lead on the new project.

“Much preventable illness such as depression, chronic disease and obesity is impacted by where we live,” she said. “If we can improve the places we live, then we can improve the health of our population.

“With the Healthy Urban Places project, we will bring together local communities, decision-makers and researchers to design ‘health’ into urban planning, making our cities healthier and happier places to live and thrive.”