Complexity in Health Improvement

我们知道，影响健康和健康不平等的因素很多，该股的工作涵盖健康的社会、经济、环境和文化决定因素。这一计划旨在了解这一点以及多种相互依存的因素在发挥作用。我们希望在开发新的研究方法方面发挥领导作用，以评估旨在改善健康和减少健康不平等的方案，我们希望确定方案的有效性如何以及为什么会不同。这一点很重要，因为决策者和那些设计服务的人需要了解将努力和投资放在哪里。我们必须确定什么对谁有效，在什么情况下和为什么；这是我们在这个方案中工作的重点。我们将优先评估解决肥胖和饮酒问题、使用新技术或针对严重精神疾病患者的健康行为的干预措施。还需要更好地了解是否可以将具体的干预措施和方案转移到不同的环境、目标群体或要解决的问题，而不丧失其效力。要做到这一点，我们将需要确定哪些因素使一项方案有可能被修改以发挥作用，或者实际上哪些因素意味着可转移性可能无效。我们将进一步开发和应用方法来理解和模拟多个相互依赖的因素如何在复杂的适应系统中聚集在一起，这些系统产生健康不平等并抵制变化。这将包括对社交网络和饮酒行为的关注。将提供工作人员培训、开发高级课程和领先的同行研究人员合作网络，以提高我们制定和评估复杂公共卫生方案和了解复杂系统的专业能力。

We know that many factors influence health and health inequalities and the work of this Unit covers social, economic, environmental and cultural determinants of health. This programme is designed to look across this and the multiple interdependent factors at play. We want to provide leadership on the development of new research methods to evaluate programmes that aim to improve health and reduce inequalities in health, and we want to identify how and why programme effectiveness may vary. This is important since decision makers and those designing services need to understand where to target effort and investment. It’s imperative that we can identify what works, for whom, under what circumstances and why; this is the focus of our work in this programme. We will prioritise evaluations of interventions that tackle obesity and alcohol use; use new technology; or target health behaviour among those with serious mental illness. There also needs to be a better understanding of whether specific interventions and programmes can be transferred to different settings, target groups, or the problem to be addressed, without losing their effectiveness. To do this we will need to identify what elements make it possible for a programme to be modified in order to work or indeed which elements means transferability may not be effective. We will further develop and apply methods to understand and simulate how multiple interdependent factors come together in complex adaptive systems that generate heath inequalities and are resistant to change. This will include a focus on social networks and on drinking behaviour.Staff training, developing advanced courses, and leading collaborative networks of fellow researchers will be delivered in order to improve our professional capacity to develop and evaluate complex public health programmes and understand complex systems.