Complexity in Health Improvement

我们知道，许多因素影响健康和保健不平等现象，本股的工作涉及健康的社会、经济、环境和文化决定因素。本课程旨在审视这一点以及多种相互依存的因素在起作用。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现象的规划，我们希望确定规划效果如何以及为什么会有所不同。这一点很重要，因为决策者和服务设计人员需要了解将工作和投资的目标放在哪里。我们必须确定什么对谁有效，在什么情况下以及为什么有效；这是我们本项目工作的重点。我们将优先评估解决肥胖和酗酒问题的干预措施；使用新技术；或者以严重精神疾病患者的健康行为为目标。还需要更好地了解具体的干预措施和规划是否可以转移到不同的环境、目标群体或要解决的问题，而不会失去其有效性。要做到这一点，我们将需要确定哪些因素使方案有可能被修改以发挥作用，或者哪些因素意味着可转移性可能无效。我们将进一步发展和应用方法来理解和模拟多种相互依存的因素如何在产生健康不平等和抵抗变化的复杂适应系统中聚集在一起。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、开发高级课程和领导研究人员合作网络，以提高我们制定和评估复杂公共卫生规划以及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.