Our School focuses on applied, interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research that addresses local, national and international issues relating to health and social care practice, policy and education.
Our staff have a wide range of research interests alongside their clinical and academic experience. Our School advocates a strong focus on service user participation and co-production. Our School is committed to delivering high quality transformational research-led education that shapes the future of health and social care.
The strategic vision for research in the School is to focus on delivering high quality transformational research-led education that shapes the future of health and social care. The School has four research groups which provide opportunities for staff, students and partners to work in collaboration across the health and social landscape. We offer a range of postgraduate research across our research groups.
Our research naturally leads to close working partnerships across the university, the local area, and the wider world. We have carried out projects with academic colleagues across multiple departments, worked closely with clinicians and patients in different spheres of healthcare, and collaborated with key organisations to ensure that a diverse range of voices are heard through our work.
When developing funding applications, we encourage our researchers and partners to access the NIHR Research Support Service (RSS).
Through the RSS researchers can access free, confidential advice on their projects, from methodologies to patient involvement for inclusive research. This support is available for all, from academics through to clinicians.
We work with academic colleagues across the university on projects that tackle challenges in health and social care. This work can range from funded projects with multiple departments, to joint supervision of PhD students carrying out multidisciplinary studies.
In particular we have carried out joint projects with the Department of Sociology and Criminology, the School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences, the Department of Psychology, the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering and the Department of Language and Linguistics.
Our staff can also become members of university research Centres and Institutes, which offer opportunities for further joint working on relevant projects. We have worked particularly closely with the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), utilising their data expertise for projects related to public health, as well as the Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing, the Centre for Coastal Communities, and the Health, Wellbeing and Care Hub.
As an issue that impacts everyone, health research requires collaboration with organisations across the policy and research spectrum. Our research has been carried out as part of partnerships with a broad range of groups, from local and national governments to charities and third sector organisations, NHS Foundation Trusts, and funding bodies such as the NIHR.
Some of our recent partnerships include:
We offer a wide range of research and consultancy services to local, national, and international health care organisations, social care bodies and voluntary sector organisations.
Enquiries can be made to evaluate@essex.ac.uk