Fuse welcomes the Faculty of Public Health conference to the North East

The Sage venue in Gateshead played host to more than 500 public health professionals from across the UK during its two day annual conference (23-24 June), this year themed as The Politics of Healthy Change.

Fuse research featured prominently throughout the conference programme, with the Centre running its own parallel session called Public Health in Practice on the Wednesday (24 June).

This session reflected on opportunities and challenges in developing collaborative research projects to support the use of research evidence in practice. It provided participants with the opportunity to increase their understanding of strategic research priorities in the North East, and mechanisms for sharing and developing evidence with academics to support these priorities. The hour was chaired by Professor John Ashton CBE, President, UK Faculty of Public Health and the four papers below were presented, followed by a panel (pictured) discussion with the audience:

• An appreciative inquiry into North East Health and Wellbeing Strategies: building on their strengths in relation to inequalities, and place-shaping (Alyson Learmonth, Fuse associate and independent consultant in the field of public health)
• Prioritising public health investment in three local authorities in England: views on targeted health economics support (Silvia Scalabrini and Jo Grey, Fuse associates)
• Responsive (academic) research services: more than a post box for policy and practice? Reflections on two years of collaborative working with AskFuse (Peter van der Graaf, AskFuse Manager; Janet Shucksmith, Fuse Deputy Director; Rosemary Rushmer, Fuse Programme Lead and Mark Welford, Fuse Communications Officer)
• Sharing data held by local authorities: experiences and challenges in relation to the National Child Measurement Programme (Ashley Adamson, Fuse Director)

In another parallel session on Wednesday entitled Help people live healthier lives Linda Penn, Research Associate for Fuse’s Healthy Ageing Research Programme talked about preventing type 2 diabetes in women from black and minority ethnic populations who are at high-risk. This study also includes Fuse senior investigator Falko Sniehotta and former Fuse Director Martin White.

There were are also plenty of Fuse related sessions on Tuesday (23 June) starting with Writing for the FPH Journal led by Fuse associate Ted Schrecker, the Journal’s joint editor.

Eileen Kaner, Fuse Senior Investigator presented Understanding social, structure and commercial influences on the drinking behaviour of young people (aged 13-17) in the parallel session Manifesto - A good start in life. This work also involves Stephanie Scott, Fuse Research Associate for the Early Life and Adolescence Research Programme and Janet Shucksmith, Fuse Deputy Director.

In the same parallel session Mandy Cheetham, Research Associate for the Fuse Translational Research Programme presented Energy drinks; the politics and principles of potential interventions targeting children and young people.  Fuse members Shelina Visram, Stephen Crossley, and Amelia Lake are also involved in this research.

Running alongside the conference was an exhibition and a range of professional and educational events. A visit to the Fuse stand provided a chance to collect a few freebies, find out more about the Centre, and see our new ‘talking heads’ video in which we challenged our academics to tell us about their research in 30 seconds.  There were plenty of Fuse research posters in the foyer areas vying for attention and those all-important votes.

To revisit the discussion and action at the conference use the hashtag #fphconf on Twitter. If you are interested in writing a post for the Fuse blog about the conference please contact Mark Welford (m.welford@tees.ac.uk).

Last modified: Tue, 31 Jul 2018 09:13:42 BST