Our expertise contributes to improved health, wellbeing and safety for individuals. We enhance the skills of a wide range of people, both lay and professional, in providing services. This enhances human capital for individuals, organisations and services in the public and private sectors.

We provide an authoritative voice in research and education. We are valued globally, nationally and regionally for the quality and policy/practice relevance of our research, education and training and for our contribution to knowledge exchange. This improves service provision and care through better-prepared professionals, practitioners, policymakers and health researchers.

Members of the Division of Health Research come from a wide range of academic disciplines and professional backgrounds. We have a well-established reputation for conducting excellent academic research that is both interdisciplinary and translational.

Research groups in the Division work closely with our colleagues in the rest of the Faculty of Health and Medicine on the Faculty’s core interdisciplinary research themes: Ageing, Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Cancer, Infectious Diseases, Mental Health and Public Health.

Our research is focused in three of these main themes, within which a number of research centres and groups are located:

• Ageing and end of life care
• Mental health and wellbeing
• Public health and health equity

The Division is host to one of eight hubs delivering the NIHR Research Support Service (RSS)

This is a national service providing free and confidential support for researchers to apply for funding applications and provides post-award support to develop and deliver clinical and applied health and care research. Access to support, advice and expertise is available for all researchers working across the remit of the NIHR and other national peer-reviewed competitions.

There are also specialist centres with expertise in public health and social care. Lancaster University is host to the RSS Hub and Specialist Centre for Social Care as delivered by Lancaster, in partnership with the universities of Liverpool (including the Clinical Trials Centre) Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University.

RSS support includes:

• pre and post award advice from a broad range of expert methodologists
• advice on study development and delivery
• advice on patient and public involvement, and on developing and delivering inclusive research
• opportunities to collaborate with centres of research excellence
• signposting to other sources of advice and support