Programme integration (WP3)

Work Package 3 (WP3) aims to maximise societal impact through strategic coordination of the research programme as a whole and includes as a core activity the co-development and evaluation of the intervention. Objectives are to: develop shared understanding across the group; develop and facilitate a co-production plan for the three-stage development and evaluation of the intervention, which will integrate the range of methods used across the programme and embed these within a framework approach to societal impact maximisation; critically reflect on the group’s approach to and its efficacy in research operationalisation and societal impact-orientation.

Phase 1 work focuses on the development of shared understandings across the newly formed consortium. This includes formalization of: the theoretical foundations underpinning the UK Prevention Research Partnership; how foundational principles – trans-disciplinarity, societal impact, need for new approaches – are embedded in TRUUD’s research governance and operationalization; key definitions and understandings. Concurrently, co-production of interventions starts with an initial focus on early programme integration and management, through co-development with WP Leads of detailed, interdependent implementation plans for WPs 1, 2, 4 and 5. The detailed WP3 implementation plan then builds on the early theoretical framing and will include: strategic considerations in programme integration; detailed steps for co-producing the multi-action intervention at the end of each phase; a strategic impact planning and evaluation framework, and alignment to UKPRP’s broader theory of change; and an integrated qualitative systems framework for evaluating causal links and probabilities between decisions made far upstream and health outcomes downstream based on the hierarchy of research impact. The intervention, impact and evaluation strategies will be co-produced and tested iteratively internally and with end users (via WPs 1 and 4). The implementation plan will require sufficient flexibility such that intervention design can respond to a wide range of contexts and applications. Initial development will take place in Phase 1 with refinement in Phases 2-4. These combined strategies will draw on emerging best practice in the fields of the ‘Science of Team Science’. Systems approaches and soft systems methods will be applied as appropriate (in this and other WPs).

The main outputs from this work package are: i) a book or monograph aimed at the academic community and taking a critical theory lens to the call for new approaches to researching complex societal challenges, considering governance, operationalisation and structural barriers in particular, using TRUUD as a case study; ii) a Health Valuation and Integration Toolkit (H-VIT) with Strategy Guidance Note aimed at city, region and national level decision-makers in public and private sector, which bridges the economic database model (from WP2) to urban governance contexts, and provides a framework for its application with wider, qualitative valuation techniques.