The public health theme team  of the CLAHRC CP are part of a Professor Carol Brayne’s research team based at the Cambridge Institute of Public Health.

Our team consists of academic public health consultants,  public health consultants and senior researchers who work collaboratively across the CLAHRC  with the research themes, as well as leading CLAHRC Public Health research projects.

Public health research or academic public health  is  the co-production of evidence from research spanning prevention of ill health, promotion of health, disease management, patient care, delivery of healthcare and its organisation, as well as in public health and social care, and is key to improving health. This can include systematic reviews of current evidence and synthesis of evidence; rapid evidence appraisal service across the region, to provide evidence for clinically relevant questions and generate knowledge that will support commissioners.

Our public health generic input into the CLAHRC is aimed at picking out the public health aspects of each clinical theme (child and adolescent, adult, old age and end of life care) to develop better service mapping, integration of service, evaluation of service redesign (what works and what doesn’t) and analysis of policy. We also work in collaboration with Eastern Region Public Health Observatory to make use of epidemiological and socio-economic data to add context to CLAHRC CP research.

Our main projects:

• Comparative effectiveness of cognitive therapies delivered face-to-face compared with over the telephone, in the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme
• Cost of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme
• Incidence and prevalence of psychotic disorders in England
• Children and Young People: Improving Access to Psychological Therapy (CYP IAPT)
• Measuring the length of stay in mental health