We have published a timeline of highlights from 20 years of research into the social influences on health and wellbeing. For the past two decades, the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit (SPHSU) has been supported by joint core funding from the Medical Research Council and Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office, building on the legacy of our research dating back to 1955.

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The SPHSU is leading one of eight new Mental Health Networks funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The Transdisciplinary Research for the Improvement of Youth Mental Public Health (TRIUMPH) Network was launched on 1st December and will bring together young people, health practitioners, policy-makers and those working with voluntary organisations, with academics from across clinical, social sciences, arts and humanities, design, and computer sciences disciplines. We will work together to find new ways to improve mental health and wellbeing, especially among vulnerable and disadvantaged groups where need is greatest.

Join the network and follow @TRIUMPHnetwork

There is increasing political and academic interest in the potential effects of implementing a universal basic income scheme in which all individuals are unconditionally provided with a substantial, regular sum of money on a long-term basis. A new report by Dr Marcia Gibson, Dr Peter Craig and Wendy Hearty (NHS Health Scotland) is the first comprehensive scoping review of 28 studies of ten interventions which unconditionally provided substantial cash transfers to individuals or families.

Read the report >

Analysis of how UK newspapers presented the sugar and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) policy debate suggests that media representation was frequently supportive of a sugar tax and this may have played a role in shaping its acceptability. Christina Buckton and colleagues found the problem of excessive sugar consumption was often characterised as being driven by the food and drink industry’s production and marketing of ‘unhealthy’ sugary products. The problem was primarily characterised as having governmental solutions with almost half of articles specifically calling for a tax on SSBs, although industry voluntary responsibility was also mentioned.

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In the past few months, our researchers have delivered presentations and led workshops at conferences across the world, including the European Public Health conference in Slovenia, the International Congress of Behavioural Medicine in Chile, BigSurv18 and Urban Transitions 2018 in Spain, and the UK Public Health Science conference in Northern Ireland.

Professor Rich Mitchell, who leads our Neighbourhoods and Communities programme, has been named as a 2018 Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics for "exceptional research performance demonstrated by production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science". Rich is one of ten University of Glasgow researchers in this category, compared with five last year.

All schools in Scotland are invited to participate in a new mental health data platform, the Schools Health and Wellbeing Improvement Research Network (SHINE). The SHINE team includes researchers from our Unit and the Institute of Health and Wellbeing, and the University of St Andrews. Adolescence is a critical period for young people’s health and wellbeing and while numerous interventions have been developed to promote pupil health and wellbeing, results are mixed and more research is needed on how best to increase their effectiveness. The SHINE website will go live shortly; in the meantime keep up to date on Twitter @ScotlandSHINE

Mapping discourse coalitions in the Minimum Unit Pricing for alcohol debate: A discourse network analysis of UK newspaper coverage

Mental health and the jilted generation: Using age-period-cohort analysis to assess differential trends in young people's mental health following the Great Recession and austerity in England

Age, health and other factors associated with return to work for those engaging with a welfare-to-work initiative: a cohort study of administrative data from the UK’s Work Programme

Communicating antimicrobial resistance and stewardship in the national press; lessons from sepsis awareness campaigns

Lack of transparency in reporting narrative synthesis of quantitative data: a methodological assessment of systematic reviews

Group-based healthy lifestyle workplace interventions for shift-workers: a systematic review

Our Complexity research programme organised a weekend hackathon in the Unit which brought together sixteen computer scientists, artists, designers and researchers to develop a prototype of a mobile app, computer game or interactive website to help us communicate the complexity of health to the public and policy makers. 

We visited the Forge shopping centre in Glasgow as part of Explorathon (European Researchers Night) to ask shoppers what factors are important to give baby Kirsty the best start in life and ensure she has a healthy future?

Dr Michael Green organised an evening event to share some of his research findings on youth smoking, including the impact of policy changes such as the ban on smoking in public places and the use of e-cigarettes. The Unit also took part in two community centre taster days, in Calton and Castlemilk, where Dr Marcia Gibson and Dr Kathryn Skivington explored community members’ views on Universal Basic Income.

As part of our Milestone Year celebrations, a special seminar series ran from October-December with six current and former senior SPHSU researchers. Our PhD students also organised an event: Past, Present and Future: 20 years of MRC-funded studentships.

We exhibited in the Scottish Parliament on 11th December at a reception organised by the Cross Party Group on Health Inequalities and addressed by the Minister for Public Health, Sport and Wellbeing.