Evaluating what works: improving public health through local government partnerships

Across the UK, local authorities are striving to deliver bold and innovative public health interventions – from weight management and tackling problem gambling to active travel schemes and digital service delivery – despite limited budgets and increasingly complex health challenges.

But for too long, many of these initiatives have lacked a strong evidence base. Local government teams often work at pace and with limited access to research funding or academic collaboration. As a result, promising interventions are rarely evaluated in depth, meaning valuable opportunities to learn and improve can be missed.

Why academic rigour matters

Enter PHIRST: the Public Health Intervention Responsive Studies Teams initiative, run by NIHR. PHIRST provides timely, co-produced, and fully funded academic evaluations of local, non-NHS public health interventions, enabling local governments to understand what really works, why, and how to reduce health inequalities.

One of 10 teams funded through the programme is PHIRST Connect, led by the University of Hertfordshire in collaboration with the Universities of East Anglia, Birmingham and Ulster. Since 2020, PHIRST Connect has delivered high-impact evaluations in partnership with public health teams across the UK and recently secured a further £2.5m to continue this work until 2030.

Professor Katherine Brown has spent two decades working with the public health workforce to improve research and evaluation, including eight years embedded part-time at Public Health Warwickshire – giving her first-hand insight into the realities of delivering public health on the ground.

Collaboration is at the core of the PHIRST Connect approach. Every evaluation is co-produced with local authority partners, public contributors and service users. An active Public Involvement in Research group helps shape each project from design to dissemination, ensuring that lived experience is valued alongside technical expertise.

The team also explores creative ways of sharing findings, including performance, visual media and poetry, to better engage the communities the research is designed to benefit.

PHIRST Connect has delivered evaluations across a diverse range of public health programmes in all four nations of the UK.

Whole systems approaches to tackling obesity have been a focus in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the team assessed multi-sector strategies addressing broader social, commercial and environmental influences on health, such as access to green space and affordable healthy food.

In Wales, researchers analysed the shift of the Welsh National Exercise Referral Scheme from face-to-face sessions to virtual delivery, capturing insights into how digital adaptations can sustain engagement with people exercising in their own homes.

A collaboration in Lambeth, South London, included an evaluation of the Black Men’s Consortium, a community-led project using improvisational theatre to support the mental health of working-age black men. The research findings were shared through a performative arts presentation at the annual Local Government Association conference.

Meanwhile, in Leeds, the researchers examined how users of drug and alcohol services adapted to remote delivery during the Covid-19 pandemic. The findings have supported more flexible, user-centred commissioning, turning emergency changes into longer-term service improvements.