SIPHER annual meeting
The SIPHER team got together earlier this month for our first in person/hybrid meeting since November 2019. Over two days, we reconnected with each other and explored the connections between the different work strands of SIPHER, focusing on where we are currently collaborating, and building new interdisciplinary ideas and commitments. We attempted to bring together all these new and existing connections in a huge diagram aka the ‘wall of SIPHER’!
The workstrand leads gave presentations to update the team on policy partners’ inclusive growth agendas, policy microsimulation work i.e. modelling to show how policy impacts differ across geographical areas and society groups, and the societal valuation work which is providing insight into how people value different policy outcomes. Robin Purshouse summarised how the various workstrands feed in to the development of a decision support tool that identifies strategies that will perform well across key policy outcomes.
The meeting was a really valuable opportunity to bring together our academic and policy partners to talk about progress made so far and future plans as we move into year three of SIPHER.
Online discussion groups – wellbeing
Workstrand 6 in SIPHER is getting ready to run online discussion groups with members of the public about how they value different aspects of wellbeing, such as the effects of mental and physical health, disposable income, employment situation, loneliness, housing and neighbourhood safety. People from Sheffield, Greater Manchester and Scotland, of different ages, gender, income levels and diversity of views will be included. This work was planned pre-pandemic and envisaged as face to face workshops to encourage deliberation. But given the pandemic, we have decided to move them online. We are also planning one-to-one telephone interviews to seek the views of those who are “digitally excluded”.
We are excited to be working with NatCen’s Centre for Deliberative Research (CDR) who will recruit participants and facilitate the online discussion groups, alongside SIPHER researchers. CDR is a sector leader in deliberative research so the Workstrand 6 team are looking forward to collaborating with them in this emerging research method of using discussion groups online.
The Unequal Pandemic
SIPHER researchers Clare Bambra and Kat Smith have recently published a book with Julia Lynch, ‘The Unequal Pandemic, COVID-19 and Health Inequalities’. The book dispels the myth that we are ‘all in the same boat’ by showing how the pandemic is a syndemic of disease and inequality. The book was highlighted in the New Statesman as one of the most influential books about the pandemic: “This damning review concludes that important lessons must be drawn from the pandemic if we are to prevent inequalities being exacerbated again.”
New on the SIPHER blog
Mary Gogarty shares her experience working as an Embedded Researcher in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority as part of SIPHER. She outlines ‘a day in the life’ of an embedded researcher, the challenges for integrating complex systems science in policy organisations and the opportunities for policy organisations involved in this kind of project.
Ruth Lupton, Ceri Hughes and Lucy Gavens have written about measuring inclusive economies, and how SIPHER has had to do its own thinking about which measures would best support its goal of mapping and modelling relationships between inclusive economies and health outcomes.
SIPHER podcast series
In the latest episode of the SIPHER podcast, Petra Meier speaks with Patricia L. Mabry, an interdisciplinary scientist who applies cutting edge methodologies (modelling and simulation, data science, network science, Artificial Intelligence) to research questions in healthcare, science of science, tobacco control, and health disparities.
You can listen to the podcast here
Welcome to new team members
SIPHER is welcoming two new Co-Directors. Julian Cox is Head of Research at the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, and Corinna Elsenbroich is Reader in Computational Modelling at the University of Glasgow.
Anthony Rafferty, Professor of Organisational Management at Manchester University has joined the Consortium to work in the inclusive economy policy space, taking over from Tarani Chandola who is taken up a post at the University of Hong Kong. Anthony has particular expertise in the area of employment and labour market economies, and welfare, and is Deputy Director of the Work and Equalities Institute.
David Innes is taking over as SIPHER’s Consortium Manager from Lucy Gavens who has taken on a new role as a Consultant in Public Health.
View the whole SIPHER team here.