About the Centre for Healthcare and Communities

The Research Centre for Healthcare and Communities enables academic and health and social care leaders, educators and researchers to develop, lead and deliver research with partners within the NHS, social care and third sector, universities and other collaborators. We work to create the key links between research, practice and education to make a difference to patient care and community health and wellbeing at local, national and global level. Through the combined expertise of clinical-academics, researchers, patients and service user groups, the centre supports skilled, compassionate, effective health and social care and service provision through excellence in research and development, innovation and enterprise, education, capacity building and leadership.

The centre works closely with Coventry University’s Centre for Care Excellence for Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health.

As a centre we strive to display the following characteristics:

• Agile and disruptive
• Collaborative and co-creative
• Ethical and sustainable
• Excellent and impactful
• Challenge led and transdisciplinary

Emerging Themes

The research work of the team follows these themes:

Workforce, wellbeing and mental health: The aim of this research theme is to identify the factors that improve well-being and working lives and the strategies that empower people to contribute to society in a meaningful and a sustainable way. We work with our current partners and develop new collaborations to undertaken work which increases societal understanding of the systems within which people work and the impact on wellbeing.

Abuse and trauma: The vision of the Abuse, Trauma and Health theme is to create high-quality research, visibility and impact in the field of interpersonal trauma, mental health and healing. We strive to achieve this through creative, compassionate research practices; inclusive, interdisciplinary partnerships; and an environment that nurtures excellent research(ers).

Public health, inequalities and behavioural science: Our goal is to provide evidence to enable government, organisations and the wider society to tackle health inequalities within communities from the individual to societal level. To achieve this we conduct research across three overlapping areas; asset-based approaches, wider determinants of health and preventative public health interventions. All of this work is underpinned by high quality behavioural science theory and methodology. Our cluster of staff conducts a wide range of research from small exploratory studies to large scale pragmatic trials all with the intention of providing high quality evidence to support policy development and initiative designed to reduce health inequalities individually and across societies.

Maternal and child health: What we do - We are focused on getting it right for the most vulnerable in our community. Using a human rights-based approach, we use a social model of health to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion in everything we do. We partner with community-level agencies, the NHS, and other groups and organisations to authentically co-create strategies and resources to implement woman-centred care in their own communities and practice settings. We generate new research into maternal and infant care to enable the provision of safe, transparent, effective and efficient services. We support the translation of evidence into practice, policy and education. About us - We are a inter and transdisciplinary group of researchers that share a common goal to provide better care for women and their families and communities.

Acute care and rehabilitation interventions

Research Methods and Evaluation Unit:

Across the institute for health and wellbeing we operate a Research Methods and Evaluation Unit through which we provide internal and external research methods expertise to support all areas of our activity. This includes gold standard research methods for evaluation studies, epidemiology, interventions, data analysis, health economy & experience-based co-design. We are unique in our co-creation and end-user involvement, as well as our digital integration methods into healthcare research, including the availability of our award-winning digital platform. This unit enables us to respond rapidly to high priority emerging research and evaluation calls, across a diverse range of subject areas. We seek opportunities to apply our specialist skills within the context of transdisciplinary teams to ensure the highest quality of applied research and evaluation activity.

The Research Methods and Evaluation Unit (RMEU) is a newly formed and is lead by Professor Petra Wark. The purpose of the unit is to add value and strengthen the research work across the Institute and conduct high-quality internationally recognised health research within its own rights. The unit works in partnership with our postgraduate students and staff through delivering and supporting research, teaching, dissertation and thesis supervision, mentoring programmes, and CPD. The core team draws upon the expertise of colleagues within the Institute to widen its scope.

• Professor Petra Wark (lead), Professor in Epidemiology and Evidence-Based Healthcare
• Professor Ala Szczepura, Professor of Health Technology Assessment
• Dr Cain Clark, Assistant Professor (Data Analytics)
• Dr Hesam Ghiasvand, Assistant Professor (Health Economics)
• Nikki Holliday, Design Manager (Co-creation and Usability studies)