Evidence for healthy lives We want a better evidence base for decision making on what works to improve people’s health

Securing good health requires new approaches to generating and using evidence about population-level action on the wider determinants of health.

Find out more below about the Health Foundation's work to strengthen and develop the evidence base in order to support population-level policy action and intervention to improve health.

A new model of evidence

We are working with Dr Harry Rutter from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to develop a new model of evidence that will inform public health research, policy and practice.

Find out more about this work in the link below.

A recipe for action

It is increasingly recognised that addressing the current challenges facing people’s long-term health outcomes in the UK isn’t simply a problem of research translation and access to existing evidence. It is a more fundamental problem: the evidence relevant to population-level action for long-term population health benefit – and the support to produce such evidence – is limited.

Producing such evidence requires current public health challenges to be viewed as social, economic, political and cultural phenomena. It also requires a wider set of disciplines to be deployed to both understand and address the challenges effectively.

The social and economic value of health

We have made £2m funding available for innovative research that builds evidence for health as an asset for society and the economy, and generates knowledge to understand the impact that an individual's health has on their own social and economic outcomes.

Find out more about the programme and some of its projects below.

Generating new insights through partnership

The Health Foundation is pleased to be a member of the UK Prevention Research Partnership (UKPRP), an alliance of funders who have agreed to commit £50m to support research into the primary prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

Find out more about the partnership by clicking below.