The IPH Research and Information Team supports the development, implementation and evaluation and monitoring of public health actions that aim to improve health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities across the island of Ireland.
Research, information and population health
Evidence-informed policy making and practice are at the core of the two public health frameworks, Making Life Better and Healthy Ireland, on the island. The work of the Team directly supports each framework in the context of North-South co-operation by producing, disseminating and applying research and information. It strengthens these activties by helping to build research and information capacity.
The Team provides this support to all sectors (to all-of-government, government departments and the voluntary - community and academic sectors) at all geographical levels (at all-island, national and local levels) .
Activities
The Research and Information Team’s analytical work is focussed on policy-relevant intelligece on priority public health issues such as the production of national and sub-national estimates and forecasts of long term conditions and burden of disease studies including estimation of the lifetime cost of childhood obesity for the EU Joint Action on Nutrition and Physical Activity (JANPA).
The Team manages a number of innovative information websites including:
- The Health Well and its All-Ireland Public Health Repository that provide access to public-health related documents from our partner organisation websites and Open Access journals
- Online data tools such as the Community Profiles Tools that support local action by providing access to over 250 local health-related indicators along with GIS-based tools to tabulate, map and map them.
- Collaborative online workspaces for relevant organisations, networks and working groups
The Team helps build capactiy by contributing to strategic research and information developments, supporting particular initiatives and providing training on its websites and tools,
Translating knowledge into effective policy and practice is the cornerstone of all the Team’s work. It complements this by organising, in collaboration with key partners, knowledge translation events such as annual Open Aceess Week seminars, the bi-annanual all-island Knowledge4Health Conference and other topic-based activties.
