User Fellow:
Award Number:
Start date:
Finish date:

Health Action Zones (HAZs) are locally-based initiatives to improve health and tackle health inequalities. Funded by central government, Health Action Zones are based on partnerships with communities in disadvantaged areas. By 2001, 26 HAZs had been established covering 13 million people.

Fiona Johnstone, a public health specialist with Liverpool Health Authority, used her User Fellowship to draw out policy and practice implications of Health Variations Programme research for Health Action Zones in and beyond Merseyside. Her Fellowship also aimed to develop effective channels of communication for disseminating health inequalities research to Health Partners in Merseyside and other HAZs nationally.

Activities included:

• reviewing and distilling research reports and papers from phase 1projects in the Programme, cross-referencing the information with key areas of HAZ policy (e.g. mental health, heart disease, quality of life, education and social exclusion);
• assessing whether and how far health inequalities research is guiding the development of HAZs. This review made clear that many interventions have been funded without the rationale for the intervention being explicitly related either to health inequalities research or to other research evidence.
• identifying the barriers to using research. This involved mapping how HAZ groups accessed the information they needed to prepare bids for HAZs and regeneration interventions, and the barriers they faced in finding information. The mapping exercise was carried out through liason with HAZ partners, and presentations and discussions at two HAZ conferences. Important barriers included the difficulties of knowing where and how to access evidence, the over-technical language in which relevant information was presented, and concerns about its applicability to the local contexts and communities served by the HAZ. Insights from this phase of the fellowship were reported in the Programme newsletter, Health Variations (see below).
• conducting interviews to explore in depth these barriers to effective communication. This involved people from the voluntary sector and statutory agencies, such as local authority staff and health professionals. Key areas raised will be tackled through the development of guidance for accessing research information.