Health Studies User Conference 2026: Research impact

She's Finn, who is a colleague of mine at the UK Data Service, Finn Dunning Green, is the director of impact. They lead a team which makes census aggregate data and international macro data accessible to researchers, alongside leading the UK DS impact team. They are very interested in new ways to tell stories. There we go. Which show the value and impact of social science data and the supporting research data infrastructure. So, over to you, Finn. >> Thank you very much, Vanessa, and thank you, Sally. It's really It's It's a bit of a mixed blessing to be following you, actually, Sally, cuz it's both a privilege because that was an amazing keynote, but also like it's you're I'm in that late night late afternoon position of follow that, but I'll do what I can. So, yes, my my session is called healthy data outcomes, and it's around data into into impact, and yes, does touch on things that have just been discussed around the APMS, around stories, but I won't jump ahead of myself cuz that would be unfair on you. So, um Right, get my slides working properly. Um in our impact area, we work on Simon Sinek's why, how, what model. We want to know, before we start doing stuff, why we're doing it and how we're doing it, and then we work then the what comes out of that. And our why for impact is very simple. As it says there on on the slide, we want to know and show that our data makes a difference in the world. And this is It's why it's perfect that I'm I'm talking with you at the end of the day because actually it's been so much amazing stuff that we've heard around the data and the use of the data today, and how it's making a difference. So, I'm going to talk a little bit around connecting with that. And that leads into our how. And our how is that we develop and create narratives, see, back to the story, that tell the story of the impact of the UK Data Service and its data. And going to have a look. Oh, sorry, no. Jumped ahead of myself then. So, in terms of data impact, we we align our definition of impact with the SRC's definition. These are just some of the examples of how we evidence and promote data impact. Quite a bit of what you're going to hear in the next 10 minutes or so does relate to changes in policy, but we very much look at the other areas and ones are not listed on here as well because we recognize that impact can take very, very many forms and can be connected in lots of different ways. I want to first of all jump back to something that in this morning we were hearing about the future directions about the health survey for England and those of you who were at the conference last year will be very aware that actually there's been measures of anxiety about would it continue, how would it continue, and so on. And I wanted to spend a little bit of time just talking about the importance of the of it from from a wider perspective. We can all look at our individual needs for it, but to look at individual perspective. Now, this was a quote by the chief medical officer nearly 40 years ago. I won't read it to you. I'm sure you can read it for yourself. So, nearly 40 years ago the data wasn't there. We didn't know what we didn't know. And that led as as I'm sure you're aware to the set set up of the health survey for England. Now, last year's Let's try that again. I am slowly melting here as the thermometer tips over 30. Last year's keynote by Lola, this is what she said about a future without the health survey for England. >> 40 years on, not really that different to what the Chief Medical Officer was saying back in 1998. If you want to read more about what Lola had to say, when you get the access to the slides afterwards, there is a link to the Data Impact blog post where she wrote about that. So, HSC >> I I did a little bit of a troll and in the past 12 months just talking about national, regional, local government in the UK um more than 60 publications from governments. So, we're not we're not talking academic research. We are talking I'm coming to it, don't worry. Um national, regional, local government more than 60 publications just in the last 12 months using that data. These are just just three of the things that I found out of those 60. So, another Chief Medical Officer um report, but this time around health trends and variation. Uh contribution to the Women's Health Strategy for England and contributions to the impact inequalities impact assessments for uh the 10-year health plan plan for England. So, actually, there you would hope that there would be a recognition right at the heart of government that this is a key um data set. In the past 12 months, nearly 1,900 academic papers and reports have been published using that the HSC. That's a pretty impressive number just in 12 months. I was I wasn't expecting it to be quite that high. I did a little bit of a a play around in the search and the these were just three of the topics that uh sorry, the topic areas that that quite a few um of these pieces of research fell into. There were many others. I I I'm not going to plaster all of them on the screen, but obviously you look at that ties in very much to what we're talking about government. The data needs to be there for us to understand what is happening with people, what we need to know about people to be able to make those decisions, to learn more. So, absolutely and and the whole point of what we're going through with this session is just how key the data is and how it threads through into the impact. And so, my question would be just I'm not going to ask you to put anything in the chat. Just think for a moment what impact could not happen just maybe from what you've heard there without the health survey for England? Quite scary when you start to think about what we couldn't do without that data. Want to talk about another couple of stories now that I've been unearthing and these are related to people who have presented during the day. Um first is story around the impact from breadth of data. So, this is um work that's been led by Jane Maddox. Now, Jane Maddox hasn't presented today, but Richard Silverwood who spoke earlier today was part of this research and that's that was where the connection came in on this. This um is uh cohort studies and longitudinal studies, 12 data sets that made the the work on this um possible. So, lots and lots of different data that has health data in it. This was connected with health care disruption during COVID. Those terrible years that we try not to think about that uh drove us online. Oh, that seems very familiar, doesn't it? We've been driven online by something else today. Um but the research uncovered and I think possibly supported things that we may have suspected, but was was data enhanced that these groups were hit hardest during COVID. Without the data, we might think it, we can't know it for sure. Uh This had all sorts of different impact. It contributed to informing UK government plans at the time for COVID in the winter 21 into 22 and beyond that. This is by the Academy of Medical Sciences. It also impacted that caused impact Oh, created impact through contributing to the UK government equalities impact assessment around COVID. Uh >> [clears throat] >> this time by the NHS Race and Health Observatory. Contributed to Welsh government's reviews around impact of COVID and COVID protections. And then reach not just in the UK, but actually in connected into international reviews of COVID impact and future planning. And the key thing My key question I keep coming back to you here is what impact could not happen without these data? You can see there's a thread going through here. And now we're going to spend a bit of time with Sally, who we've just been hearing from. So, there may be a few old bits in here that I'm repeating. Apologies to to Sally, but um she's seen these slides and and she was happy with them, so I think we're we're okay there. So, again, starting with the data, you've heard about the APMS, the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, directly commissioned by the government. As we know, Sally managed 2002 and 2014. She still advises on on 2023. Without that data, we wouldn't have this comprehensive survey, which I know Sally mentioned some of this, but how it assess assess the prevalence of some of these conditions, disorders, and behaviors. And that means that as um Sally did so I apologize this is slightly repeating, it's essential baseline data on the scale of it mental health issues in here in this country. Without it, we don't have the the um the information for public health monitoring, we don't have the data to underpin health mental health strategies. And very importantly, because of the quality and the breadth of the data, it can give different lenses on the same on the same data across the whole population and across through time. Now, couple of examples of data going through to research going into it to impact that uh I've been uncovering that I quite enjoyed finding. So, starting with the 2014 wave of the APMS, there's some research that Sally did around um intimate partner violence or domestic abuse as it's um quite often referred to as. And it was particularly around uh whether women were experiencing domestic abuse were more likely to attempt suicide. The findings from this led into a Lancet Psychiatry paper. It's a fairly typical route in terms of your of you you get the data, you do your research, you publish. It then led into working with a charity to produce the under-examined and under-reported report. This is That's terrible, isn't it? Report under-reported report. But anyway, um this was a way of making Sally's uh team's findings much more um accessible for general public use. And that has actually led into connections international national suicide prevention strategy. So, you can see a nice path right through. Now, obviously, there are other paths that have led international suicide prevention strategy, but it's important for us to be able to tell those stories of how the data has made that connection through the research, through the dissemination and engagement with the public into strategy and policy and so on. Sally joins the dots. So, there was a Work and Pensions Committee inquiry um I can't remember the year, I'm so sorry, but about protecting vulnerable benefits clients. And this led to a whole load of APNS AP EMS analysis which found that APNS data's shows that claimants receiving disability-related benefits face multiple and severe adversities. This goes against the often spouted well, they just don't want to work sorts of um perceived wisdom about this. Uh that per- pervasive view. People who have got the who are receiving disability-related benefits are often multiply impaired. And so, expecting full employment from them, the data shows that just may not be a fair expectation for everyone cuz it might be across physical, mental, social, economic, and other aspects of their lives. Without the APNS data covering all those strands, we wouldn't know this. So, this goes into a Work and Pensions Committee report. And Sally gave evidence in in person. Now, this is where I got rather intrigued because I I found an interesting little connection. I'm sure Sally was aware of this. But I I haven't been aware of this. Alec Sally could connect the dots on employment support allowance. That is a UK financial benefit for adults under state pension age who have an illness or disability that limits their ability to work in case you're not familiar with it. So, she could connect the dots. 30% of claimants have PTSD. That came out of the of the analysis, the APMS that'd been done that I showed you on the last slide. However, Sally also knew that women experiencing domestic abuse are three times more likely to attempt suicide. Two different pieces of APMS um underpinned research that came together in that moment and she was able to ask the question, "What happens and answer, I should say, what happens to your risk level if you fall into both those categories?" A connection that couldn't be made without the data, a connection that couldn't be made without the research that was done using the data and that and understanding that intersection of challenges. So, going back to my key question from before, I want you to think about the work that you do that uses health data of all different sorts. If that data didn't exist, if it wasn't made accessible by the UK Data Service, what research could you not do and what impact or potential impact could you not achieve? It's where we as the UK Data Service Impact Team are really well positioned. We have the the expertise and and long knowledge to be able to work and see these patterns and these connections and we want to work with you to be able to tell these bigger stories of how the data actually uh through research creates impact. And through that, what we want to be able to do in the same way that we did through the health conference and related things last year, where we really emphasized the importance of contributing to the um consultation on the HSC, we want to make sure we're at the heart of helping to tell those stories. So, how can we evidence and promote your impact and the impact of the data you use? We have various channels. Three that I'm going to mention this afternoon. We have the Data Impact blog. The Data Impact blog was established in 2015, so it's been running for 11 years now. It's got over 600 posts. It's got a really good both academic and general population readership, which is actually being quite quite massively growing this year. So, we're managing to get the the word out there. So, it's a really good place for discussion, for debate, for best practice around data and data impact. It's a good way of talking around the impact of research that you're doing and how that's connecting into policy making or other impact, whether that's working with charities to create to change um practice and and behavior and so on. It's not just about policy making. We also work with uh researchers to create impact case studies. So, we do develop those in partnership with researchers. Um sometimes we can say that that you may say that you want to write it on your own. Sometimes we write it for you. Sometimes there's sort of some backwards and forwards about that. But where we come in is we provide the expertise to find the clear evidence of the impact of the work that you've been doing. I can see Vanessa getting twitchy. I'm almost done. >> [laughter] >> Um more recent uh piece of work that we've been doing in the impact space is around themes. We've been creating larger narratives, back to that story thing, around connecting work within an area or within researchers' bodies of work. We currently have four um uh themes around local communities, mental health and well-being, children and young people, and poverty with another one on sustainable futures, climate change, and housing and homelessness coming within the next 6 months or so. So, we have lots of ways of building the stories together so that it is when we can talk to other stakeholders and to funders, we can say, "Look, actually we've got this bigger view and we can we can make that connection." So, for instance, I recently spoke with something in the SRC around our local communities in data theme and how it relates to the government's safer streets mission. Okay, that may change with the change of Prime Minister, but for the moment we and and we are always looking at how do we connect in very real way the stories we tell with what's important to the people and to the policy makers. So, please do share your input with us. The email address and the area on the on the UK data service website are there on the screen and will be in the PDF that you'll be able to download afterwards. Thank you. >> Thank you. Huge thank you to everyone involved in the conference today. Covered a huge amount of ground. So, we've gone from the the first thing this morning, the updates from National Centre for Social Research. Really important presentation and subsequent Q&A session on the future design of the HSE. And we'll follow up on that with Department of Health Social Care and and ONS to help facilitate your input and wider input to the implementation and try and get some news on timescales as well cuz it's obviously really really important that that we feed in. Then we moved on to the lightning talks, which were a great reminder of how much population health studies continue to evolve, you know, data linkage with other forms of data. And then this afternoon's really showcased the breadth and quality of the research and also the really impactful research that that can happen with those data. So, I think what's made today always great every year is that balance of data producers, policy colleagues, colleagues, and researchers who come along. Um as I said at the start of the day, a few things have come through really clearly. The clear themes, the continued importance of the quite high-quality population health data. I love Sally's slide. I'm hoping you can use that. The good surveys cost a lot and are a total bargain. I love that. Um the value of linking population health studies, as we've said, and then the ongoing need to connect data, research, and policy for impact. So, yes. Uh look forward to continuing the conversation. Um we'll be in touch. But finally, a massive thank you to our partners, to our speakers, chairs, and participants. Hope it's been a useful day. And with that, I'll bring the conference to an early close. And please take care and and stay safe in the heat. Thank you.