In August 2011, the National Institute for Health Research announced the provisional membership to its new School for Public Health Research.
The Cambridge Institute of Public Health is one of eight academic institutions in England. It will draw on leading applied public health research, including evaluations, and will place emphasis on what works in practice, and can be applied across nationwide.
The key objectives of the School will be to:
• Conduct research to increase the volume and quality of applied public health research and evidence, including evaluations.
• Create an environment where first class applied public health research, focussed on the needs of the public, can thrive.
In addition CIPH aims to:
• Establish a new strategic network to strengthen current links to core disciplines in the University and beyond to provide a translational platform to generate evidence relevant to key public health challenges of local, national and international importance. This will build on the existing, strong methodological and thematic work of the Institute and its collaborators.
• Create a strong and sustainable CIPH, which is recognised as an international leader in its own right, placing Cambridge on the map for public health. This will strengthen our international links and research partnerships with existing constituent units of the Institute.
• Collaborate with University of Cambridge, and its partners to create a sustainable infrastructure and interdisciplinary skill base to exploit existing and future opportunities to design, raise finance for, and conduct novel research. This research will generate evidence at the local, national and international levels for practical implementation of policies, which improve population health and wellbeing.
Making Change Work
The Cambridge Institute of Public Health will build on the benefits offered by the unique combination of science and service.
The NHS and public health landscape are undergoing significant changes, with the current transfer of the public health responsibility to local authorities, and commissioning to new Clinical Commissioning Groups
CIPH will capitalise on these new arrangements to make sure that it is closely aligned to all health, social care and commissioning provision. Combining information systems from local authorities, public health observatories and health protection, will allow a rational assessment of population health and care needs to inform commissioning and healthcare
planning for the local population. Existing close bonds with local public health bodies means that the Institute is well placed to form a strong future relationship with Public Health England.
Within this context there is both the need and the potential to bring together excellence in biomedical and population health research to improve health practice, outcomes and management of resources.
CIPH will continue to train future clinicians, researchers and public health leaders, to meet the changes and challenges facing public health in the future.
A public health community
Our vision is to create a system which has an integrated approach to healthcare and research based on whole populations, akin to long standing examples in the United States, such as the Rochester Epidemiology Project at the Mayo Clinic.
The key benefit of this integrated approach is that it allows the whole population to be engaged as partners in research.
In this way, results from world-class researchers are accessible and open to assessment, by the population, of their impact at population level. By becoming more familiar with the benefits of a research and an experimental approach to generating knowledge, local community and patients can seek to drive and participate in research initiatives, as true partners in the process of public health research and action.
It is our goal to make the Cambridge Institute of Public Health a recognised world leader in research, not only from the molecular to the population and from birth to death, but also at the heart of the community.
