SIPHER Bulletin No. 18
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Welcome to SIPHER Bulletin No.18 April 2025
SIPHER (Systems science In Public Health and health Economics Research) is supported by the UK Prevention Research Partnership.
Reflections on our SIPHER Consortium journey
Now that SIPHER has come to a close after over five years of research, collaboration, and innovation, I’d like to take this moment to reflect on the journey that brought us here. I will be forever grateful for the support by the UK Prevention Research Partnership. It allowed me to evolve what began as a spark of an idea - ignited through a casual conversation in a playground - into an exciting and productive initiative addressing health inequalities through systems science and interdisciplinary partnerships.
From the outset, we recognised that to really make headway in tackling health inequalities, we needed healthy public policy in all policy sectors, well beyond the remit of what our public health policy colleagues could directly influence.
But how can you integrate health equity considerations into policies where health is not a primary focus and create buy-in?
My vision for SIPHER was to develop a blueprint for a whole-system approach to public health, bringing together qualitative and quantitative methods and tools to support policy design across sectors. I gathered around me leading researchers from seven universities, and supported by topic and science advisory groups, policymakers at all levels of government and our community panels, we created a collaborative pipeline connecting in-depth system understanding, methods development, data-driven insights and policy design priorities. Through a powerful combination of qualitative systems methods, evidence synthesis, data science and computational modelling we tackled evidence gaps around pressing health challenges including poverty, precarious work, poor housing and declining societal mental health.
Our final Showcase event in Manchester was a testament to the reach of our work - more below. Seeing participants explore our tools and methods, hearing firsthand how they can be applied in diverse policy contexts, and engaging in helpful discussions, all confirmed the value of our work and its potential for long-term impact. It was also a wonderful opportunity to celebrate with our researchers, PhD students, policy partners, stakeholders, and all who engaged with us. I believe SIPHER has laid a strong foundation for system change, building understanding, capacity and tools for applied systems science, and I am looking forward to seeing its full impact unfold in the years ahead.
Thank you for being part of this incredible journey.
Professor Petra Meier SIPHER Director
SIPHER's final event was a tremendous success as we welcomed partners, funders, and colleagues to reflect on our policy impact, celebrate achievements, and explore our methods and tools.
During the event we captured key moments and insights, and we are excited to share a special Showcase Video from the day. This video highlights the journey and impact of the SIPHER consortium’s work—we encourage you to watch and share it!
In addition, a range of event resources, including presentations and collated links to all materials on display are now available on our website. Whether you joined us in person or are engaging with SIPHER’s work from afar, we invite you to explore these materials and continue the conversation.
Access SHOWCASE event resources
A huge thank you to everyone who supported and attended our SIPHER Showcase.
Report: SIPHER Learning and Evaluation
How did SIPHER evolve over the five years of its operation? Our SIPHER Learning and Evaluation 2019-2025 report reveals how SIPHER grew and adapted to develop a blueprint for public policy systems science. Contained are insights on how SIPHER became more coproductive with policy, managed interdisciplinarity and developed strategies for impact. Two novel interactive Insight Modules focus on the skills of embedded researchers in systems-oriented research and how systems curiosity translated into systems expertise over time.
Explore: SIPHER Evaluation and Learning 2019-2025
Interactive Insight Modules:
Our report outlines crucial insights from participatory systems mapping workshops with tenants & landlords in England’s Private Rented Sector. Findings highlight key issues—including repair quality, neighbourhood experiences, trust between landlords and tenants and tenant choice—shaping health and wellbeing.
This research informs policy recommendations to improve housing strategies and foster better tenant-landlord relationships. The report aligns with broader evidence on housing as a social determinant of health, offering vital guidance for policymakers and stakeholders.
Explore: SIPHER private rented sector and health systems map
Blog: Supporting SIPHER’S Evidence Synthesis
In our final blog Dr Ruth Wong, SIPHER Information Specialist working on our Evidence Synthesis Workstrand details the tools used by the team to provide relevant evidence for SIPHER’s mapping, modelling and evaluation work.
Read Blog: Supporting SIPHER’S Evidence Synthesis
SIPHER Wellbeing Calculator
Traditional economic policy evaluations often focus solely on health, but wellbeing is much broader. To reflect this, SIPHER developed an "equivalent income" measure that captures a fuller picture of what makes life better or worse.
Using responses to the SIPHER-7 Wellbeing Indicators – including employment, loneliness, neighbourhood safety, housing quality, and physical and mental health – the Wellbeing Calculator applies an algorithm to combine these factors into an easy-to-understand index: equivalent income.
This single, meaningful monetary figure enables direct comparisons between different policy options and forms a core part of SIPHER’s decision models, helping policymakers identify which interventions are most likely to improve population wellbeing.
Explore: SIPHER'S Wellbeing Calculator
Widespread impact of our Synthetic Population Tool
Our SIPHER Synthetic Population dataset, available via the UK Data Service since 2024, has already been downloaded over 100 times and used in 40 research projects. The popularity of this unique, spatially detailed and attribute rich "digital twin" of the UK population is its ability to support analysis at both individual and Lower Super Output Area levels—data not easily found elsewhere.
One of the uses of this dataset has been to develop a set of 13 indicators of economic inclusivity at a small area - Ward level, now openly accessible through an interactive platform. These indicators will also feature in the upcoming Healthy and Sustainable Places Data Service (HASP), The indicators will sit alongside other place-based 'smart data' to provide multi-faceted insights into the health and sustainability of UK places and will be a featured data product when the HASP data store launches in mid-May.
SIPHER Webinars
Our FREE online lunchtime sessions, which offered informative talks on key aspects of our work and resources, concluded in February with three presentations:
- Housing as a Social Determinant of Health – Dr Lisa Garnham
- The Complexity of a Systems Approach to Health Inequalities – Dr Corinna Elsenbroich
- Evaluation of a Complex Systems Science Programme – Dr Liz Such
If you missed these or any of our previous SIPHER webinars—or if you’d like to revisit or share them—all our recordings are available at SIPHER Videos and Webinars.
New Systems Map - The Wider Social Determinants of Mental Health
The Understanding Policy Processes & Evidence Needs workstrand has create a new visual resource to represent the wider social determinants of mental health and their interacting pathways
The map is built on evidence from two different types of evidence review: a SIPHER synthesis of qualitative evidence from Scotland; and a global evidence review, not limited by type, conducted by a team of psychiatrists, epidemiologists and mental health experts. It was then further augmented by suggestions from an Expert Advisory Workshop held in December 2024.
The map does not represent an ‘objective’, comprehensive, or fully up-to-date representation of all the available evidence but is instead intended to prompt discussion about determinants and pathways, including those which may be missing from the map.
Explore: The Wider Social Determinants of Mental Health - System Map and supporting resources.
Call to invest in Mental Health - Not Cut Support
The Mental Health Foundation released a powerful statement highlighting the staggering £118 billion annual cost of poor mental health to the UK economy — and warning against recent government cuts to disability and income-related benefits. Among the evidence cited is SIPHER’s October 2024 report Modelling the Adult Mental Health Impacts of Child Payment Policy. This modelling showed how increasing the Scottish Child Payment could significantly reduce poor adult mental health — reinforcing the case that preventative, income-based support leads to both better wellbeing and long-term economic savings.
NEW Publications
Presenting a pioneering approach to measuring national prosperity by integrating the concept of Mental Wealth, explicitly valuing social production alongside traditional economic output -The Value of Social Production in Norway was launched at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, January 2025. Produced by The Mental Wealth Initiative (MWI), University of Sydney, in global partnership with organisations including the European Brain Council, the Norwegian Brain Council, the Brain Capital Alliance, and the SIPHER Consortium.
Read: The Value of Social Production in Norway
Understanding causality—beyond simple associations—is essential for researchers aiming to inform policy and drive improvements in population health. SIPHER's Andreas Hoehn and Alison Heppenstall contributed to a pioneering study that describes an approach to create multilevel synthetic data with cross-level causal structures.
Read: Simulating hierarchical data to assess the utility of ecological versus multilevel analyses in obtaining individual-level causal effects. Kakampakou, L., Stokes, J., Hoehn, A. et al.2025 BMC Med Res Methodol 25, 79.
SIPHER PhD's
Congratulations to Dr Ally Brown, SIPHER researcher, who successfully passed his PhD viva in March. His thesis, “How do social, economic and health policymakers consider systematic variations in population health?”, was a key part of Understanding Policy Processes & Evidence Needs - Workstrand 1, exploring how health and non-health policymakers in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the Scottish Government conceptualised and framed ‘health’, ‘inequalities’, and ‘health inequalities’.
We are incredibly proud of all the outstanding PhD students SIPHER has been able to support. They have significantly contributed to our work, and we are delighted to have been part of their journey towards earning their doctorates. We look forward to seeing the impact they will continue to make in their fields and wish them continued success!
Contacting the team
The grant-funded period for SIPHER has now concluded. As a result, we are unable to accommodate requests for joint work or collaboration within the previously funded envelope. However, as researchers we remain enthusiastic about exploring new collaborations and joint activities and are also happy to offer advice and share insights based on the experience we have gained during our research.
Enquiries to sipher@glasgow.ac.uk will continue to be redirect it to the most relevant team member to provide a response.
Our website www.sipher.ac.uk offering access to all resources will be maintained and updated until March 2026.
Contact
SIPHER Consortium
MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow Clarice Pears Building
90 Byres Road
Glasgow G12 8TB
