Our research is being used to develop and evaluate public health interventions, and is guided by the needs of public health practice. We are pursuing the following strands of work to encourage knowledge exchange.
Relationship building
CEDAR researchers work with public health practitioners as part of their research studies. We also engage with practitioners and policymakers at a local, regional and national level to share our research and to develop understanding of public health and policy perspectives.
We are collaborating with the Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) in Cambridge in their Policy Fellowship scheme, which provides senior Whitehall policymakers with relationship building opportunities with researchers over the course of two year Fellowships. CEDAR supports a Fellowship stream themed around CEDAR research areas, with current Fellows from the Department for Transport, Local Government Association, Cabinet Office and Government Office for Science. We are also part of a CSaP/DfT organised professional development scheme, which seeks to help up-and coming civil servants gain a better understanding of evidence use in policymaking. Read a case study from Pauline Reeves, Department for Transport.
Media and resources
As well as media resources including this website, Twitter and our regular bulletin, we produce Evidence Briefs, succinct summaries of research aimed at supporting evidence based decision making. Read our Evidence Briefs here.
We also make all the Evidence Submissions that we produce for policy and guidance bodies available here.
Workshops and events
We host a number of seminars, conferences and forums for researchers, policymakers and the public to explore and discuss our research. Examples of past events include:
- What shall we do about diet and physical activity? – October 2013
- Are you in a healthy place? Neighbourhood food environments, diet and health – November 2014
- Commuting and Health – Research and Policy Forum – January 2015
- Dietary Public Health Research and the Food Industry -Towards a consensus? – December 2015
The MRC Epidemiology Unit/CEDAR Seminar Series is open to all, and speakers in this series frequently engage with topics of direct relevance to public health practice. Details of all Seminars are advertised here.
If you would like to be notified of future events, please sign up to our quarterly bulletin.
Online tools
Building on our work in data visualisation that can be found with our Evidence Briefs, our programmes are developing online tools tools to provide decision support for practitioners and policymakers.
The Propensity to Cycle Tool (PCT) is a Department for Transport funded web based tool to help planners tasked with prioritising where to invest to best realise uptake of cycling. The model provides insight into where cycling has the greatest potential to grow, and also calculate resulting societal benefits. The tool is available at www.pct.bike
The Food Environment Assessment Tool (FEAT) enables detailed exploration of the geography of food retail access across England, Scotland and Wales. It is designed around the needs of professionals in public health, environmental health and planning roles, locally and nationally. Use it to map, measure and monitor access to food outlets at a neighbourhood level, including changes over time. www.feat-tool.org.uk/
Capacity building for knowledge exchange
Building research capacity for the future is central to the CEDAR mission, and as well as nurturing academic careers, we are providing our students and early career researchers with training and opportunities to help develop skills relevant to knowledge exchange outside academia. This includes media training, involving researchers at all levels in interactions with policymakers, and supporting secondments into service settings to encourage the sharing of skills and perspectives. We are also open to hosting secondments in CEDAR from those working in policy and practice.
Students and early career researchers have been directly involved in the evaluation of public health programmes and we are open to future collaborations where public health need and our research portfolio overlap.
Find out more
You can sign up to our newsletter to be kept informed about this work. If you have any thoughts or questions about how CEDAR works with practice and policy partners, please contact Oliver Francis:
