We are excited to announce that this week is the official launch of SIPHER at the Royal Society in Edinburgh. SIPHER is a major new research consortium which seeks to support a shift from “health policy” to “healthy public policy”. This means all policy sectors working together to improve the health & wellbeing of the population and reduce inequalities.

On Wednesday 13^th November from 12:00-16:00 colleagues from over 20 organisations across the UK will join us as we share our ambitions for SIPHER. Over the next five years we will focus on understanding the system-wide impact of policies in four areas: housing, inclusive growth, mental wellbeing and adverse childhood experiences. At the launch we will hear from Policy Partners in Sheffield, Greater Manchester and the Scottish Government about what they hope SIPHER will deliver and some of the challenges they anticipate along the way. Our Research Partners will provide a beginners’ introduction to SIPHER’s interdisciplinary systems methods. They will also share current thinking on UK Health Divides and Inclusive Growth.

To find out more follow us @SipherC.

Petra Meier, SIPHER Director, attended a fringe event of the Conservative Party Conference hosted by the Centre for Progressive Policy in Manchester today. This was an excellent opportunity to listen in to emerging policy debates and participate in a round table discussion on how we can best address the true drivers of demand for the NHS. We are looking forward to seeing how Inclusive Economy conversations develop over the coming months.

Today SIPHER hosted the first of what we hope will be many successful workshops to support our research processes. Alex Penn and Pete Barbrook-Johnson from the Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (CECAN) came to Sheffield to deliver systems mapping training to 21 of our policy partners and researchers.

Our focus for the day was Inclusive Growth. This is one of 4 topics our UK Prevention Research Partnership funded Consortium will research over the next five years.

Systems mapping will form a key part of our work to understand the policy spaces in which we are operating. So, over the coming months our team will use these approaches with policy partners in Sheffield, Greater Manchester and Scotland to map out influential factors for Inclusive Growth. Once the maps are developed we will use them to shape complex systems modelling decisions in SIPHER.

If you’d like to know more please contact us at sipher@sheffield.ac.uk, find us @SipherC or visit our website www.sipher.ac.uk.