About TRUUD
TRUUD stands for ‘Tackling Root Causes Upstream of Unhealthy Urban Development’
Our urban environment impacts our health and wellbeing. Links have been found between diseases you can’t catch such as type-2 diabetes, heart disease and poor mental health and where we live. We’re collecting evidence and designing tools and interventions with industry, government and communities to help prioritise health in our urban planning.
Our Interventions
Changing Mindsets
Helping the land industry to improve their intention to act on health with joined-up working, greater advocacy and increased awareness and recognition of the issues.
Real Estate Investment
Increasing investment for pro-health decisions and promoting our health data tool (HAUS) for company decision-making.
National Government
Promoting greater coherence between departments and the use of the health data tool (HAUS) for decision-making.
Transport Planning
Co-creating tools and visual aids to embed health measures in practice through learning with Transport for Greater Manchester.
Spatial Planning
Strengthening health requirements, language and signposting in local plans and improving health principles in regeneration frameworks and Health Impact Assessments through learning with Bristol City Council.
Law and Local Government
Increasing the legal capacity to use Health Impact Assessments and improving understanding of the way law can be applied to improve health outcomes.
Public Engagement
Ensuring that public engagement meets the needs of both public and decision-makers. Improving public understanding of the factors driving development decisions and providing more opportunities to show lived-experiences.
Impact Report 2019 – 2025
Our Impact Report (published July 2025) covers all of our interventions and impact on policies, connections and upstream influence.
Our Work Packages
Primary Engagement
Together with people who work in urban development, we are mapping out the system of decision making and identifying potential areas where we can influence the system and make changes to prioritise long-term health.
Economic Valuation
We are using existing evidence and information about people’s “willingness to pay” to develop a tool to calculate the cost of poor health linked to the urban environment (e.g. health treatments, costs of missing work). This tool will be available to decision makers and the public.
Intervention Co-Production
This piece of the research will bring together information from our Primary Engagement, Economic Valuation and Public Involvement work to identify and develop the best way to prioritise health in urban development decision-making (the “intervention”). This work is also aiming to ensure that TRUUD intervention can be used in a broad range of urban development contexts.
Public Involvement
We are working with the public to develop creative initiatives. These will be used to communicate the effects of the urban environment and health inequalities on individuals and communities to decision makers.
Knowledge Exchange
TRUUD aims to work with communities and experts in urban development to develop ways to prioritise health. To do this we will make sure that we share information and listen to what people want and need (knowledge exchange). This is important because we want what we find in TRUUD to be relevant to the “real world” and to make changes to the way that decisions are made about urban developments across the country.
Meta-Research Evaluation
The TRUUD consortium is made up of lots of experts from lots of different specialties, all with health as a common priority. We are using this part of the research to ensure that we reflect on how we work as a team. This will help us to work as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Our University Consortium
Our Partners
