Public Health Wales Research and Evaluation Strategy 2023-2026 - Section 5 Implementing the Strategy

Research and evaluation provide opportunities for staff development and enhanced job roles which helps with recruitment and retention, as well as developing leaders and critical thinkers within the organisation. We want to build an organisational culture which values research and evaluation activities and supports staff to develop and apply research and evaluation skills to increase workforce capacity and capability, strengthen evidence-based practice and contribute towards creating a learning organisation.

This includes a focus on the ‘how’, ‘what works’ and ‘how to deliver’ public health interventions. We will work cross-organisationally and across the wider research system, to drive excellence and a positive culture of continuous improvement through research and evaluation.

We will do this by: 

• Empowering researchers at all levels to deliver rigorous, impactful, coherent research and evaluation programmes focused on addressing gaps in knowledge in-line with public health priorities.
• Supporting staff to develop research and evaluation proposals and funding applications based on their public health practice experience in collaboration with partners and academic networks.
• Building research and evaluation capacity and capability for all staff by developing and implementing a sustainable research and evaluation development programme that will address technical knowledge and skills, and application into practice – covering areas such as statistical design, questionnaire design and evaluation methods.
• Developing research and evaluation leadership through the development of job families and career pathways internally and maximising uptake of internal and externally-funded research programmes.
• Facilitating cross-organisational collaborative working and identifying inter-disciplinary research and evaluation opportunities within the organisation.
• Investing to support and strengthen research and evaluation capacity and capability within Public Health Wales.
• Ensuring that all Public Health Wales staff have a level of awareness of the value of research and evaluation to be able to identify knowledge gaps and use robust tools.
• Ensuring there are set standards for the quality (e.g., questionnaire design and survey methodology standards) and communication of research and evaluation outputs.
• Demonstrating clear Public Health Wales executive and board commitment to research and evaluation, with members leading and contributing to agenda setting, assessing performance and impact.
• Appointing an independent board member for research, to act as an ambassador and to champion research and evaluation at the Public Health Wales board and across the organisation.

The embedding of research and evaluation across the organisation is vital to enable the generation of evidence needed to address priority areas for public health in Wales.

Building an enabling infrastructure within Public Health Wales to support and manage research will drive forwards the implementation of this strategy.

This will support the development of a thriving research and evaluation environment in the organisation.

We will do this by: 

• Strengthening research and evaluation infrastructure and governance through transparent oversight, processes, systems and reporting.
• Facilitating high quality research and evaluation set-up and delivery through agile, clear and systematic NHS governance processes – led by the Research and Development (R&D) Office.
• Facilitating access to support for staff at all levels in Public Health Wales who wish to undertake research and evaluation, advising on how to navigate the R&D environment and signposting to internal and external sources of information (e.g., on funding streams, development, writing funding applications, statistical support, research design, protocol design and methods).
• Ensuring financial support is provided to advise on and monitor all costs relating to commercial and non-commercial research.
• Including research and evaluation within Public Health Wales’ financial strategies and plans.
• Ensuring there is the data infrastructure and agreements in place to enable access where appropriate.
• Planning, reporting and overseeing research and evaluation activities through the Public Health Wales Knowledge, Research and Information Board Committee with reporting to the Public Health Wales Executive Team, to the Public Health Wales Board and to Health and Care Research Wales

Effective collaboration across an extensive research infrastructure; with the wider health and care system, non-health sectors, commercial and industry partners, in the UK and internationally has the potential to deliver greater and more impactful research and evaluation for population health in Wales.

As Public Health Wales is part of a wider research and evaluation ecosystem, it is vital that we work with a wide range of partners and funders to influence, support and strengthen the population health agenda for people in Wales.

Public Health Wales is not a large funder of research

However we want to influence the strategic direction of public health research and evaluation including through other sources of research funding  such as:

• National and international academic sponsors
• National Institute for Health Research
• Economic and Social Research Council
• Medical Research Council
• Voluntary sectors
• Governmental sectors e.g. Welsh Government and others
• Through the research agendas of academia and partner organisations

We will do this by: 

• Strengthening links with the research and evaluation infrastructure in Wales, nationally and with international partners
• Facilitating the development of strategic research and evaluation partnerships in collaboration with academia, the public sector, local and national government, health boards, the third sector and others which are aligned to our priority areas to bring in skills and data we don’t have and which we need
• Supporting and developing research and evaluation groups aligned to Public Health Wales’ priorities and in collaboration with key stakeholders including academic and non-academic partners to capitalise on opportunities
• Developing a co-produced vision for academic public health research in collaboration with the research community and other partners in Wales
• Proactively identifying and facilitating opportunities for academic placements, postgraduate supervision, staff secondments, honorary contracts and joint posts spanning organisational boundaries (e.g., Honorary contracts, partnerships, secondments and joint staffing models)
• Working with academia and the Faculty of Public Health, to strengthen Public Health Wales’ role in the training and development of academic Public Health Specialty Registrars in Wales; and continued engagement in research among Public Health Consultants within Public Health Wales
• Increasing the visibility of the Public Health Wales R&D Office as a clear initial point of contact to facilitate research, commercial, industry and academic collaboration opportunities with Public Health Wales
• Working with the wider health and care system to support research and evaluation priorities ensuring better data quality, open and shareable data systems and data sharing agreements
• Increasing membership on national health research funding boards to be able to influence funders to address evidence gaps and research and evaluation needs.

Public involvement and engagement make research and evaluation more relevant, more reliable and more likely to change practice.

Excellent public involvement is an essential part of health research, and we want to involve people with an interest in population health and achieving well-being goals to improve its relevance, quality and impact.

Whilst we have some highly successful and visible research programmes which internal and external stakeholders know about, we acknowledge the need to increase the visibility of Public Health Wales as a leader in population health research and evaluation, and to further develop as a coherent and impactful research active organisation.

We also want to be a trusted research environment which is open, transparent, and replicable and have usable and impactful outputs.

We will do this by:

• Developing and applying a systematic approach to identifying key research and evaluation priorities for population health aligned to priorities for population health in Wales, in collaboration with policy makers, the public and interdisciplinary researchers.
• Being open about our research and evaluation interests and priorities by developing and sharing areas of research interest within and external to Public Health Wales.
• Ensuring an effective and meaningful model of engagement with the public to inform and share our research and evaluation programmes.
• Adopting the UK Standards for Public Involvement, enabling good practice in public involvement.
• Having active representation on the Health and Care Research Wales Public Involvement Alliance.
• Effectively linking with public involvement and engagement/co-production organisations to co-design research and evaluation programmes with the communities we serve and ensuring that equality, diversity and inclusion are priorities.
• Ensuring that we capture and are representative of all areas of society when developing research and evaluation activities.
• Capturing equalities information systematically to enable robust evaluation of public health programmes.
• Including research and evaluation in Public Health Wales’ communications and engagement plans to demonstrate the value and importance of research, celebrating successes and raising the profile amongst staff and the public.
• Having active representation at the Health and Care Research Wales Communications Alliance.
• Recognising and celebrating success amongst our researchers and increasing the visibility of Public Health Wales research and evaluation.
• Having common standards for research and evaluation outputs and publishing research and evaluation outputs targeted to user needs.
• Being open about which areas of research and evaluation are in development via external communications e.g. blogs and regular news updates.
• Being open about our data and methods, ensuring replicability and sharing non-findings