Institutional Context
Summary
The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is a research-intensive institution with a mission to improve health and health equity in the UK and worldwide. Founded in 1899, with sites at Keppel Street and Tavistock Place in London, the School became a global institution in 2018 with the joining of the MRC Units in The Gambia and in Uganda.
Our knowledge exchange activities enable us to address global health challenges, aligned with our research priorities. We work in partnership with communities across all sectors to create impact through translation of knowledge into policy and practice. In the past three years, LSHTM has been at the frontline of the local, national, and global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Institutional context
LSHTM’s mission is to improve health and health equity in the UK and worldwide; working in partnership to achieve excellence in public and global health research, education and translation of knowledge into policy and practice. Founded in 1899 at the London Docks, LSHTM now has core hubs in London and at the MRC Units in The Gambia and Uganda, which joined LSHTM in February 2018. Our 3,500 staff work in over 100 countries, with research spanning the molecular to the population level.
Knowledge exchange (KE) is fundamental in delivering our mission by translating our research and educational outputs into ‘real world’ impacts. As a postgraduate, specialist institution, we root our KE activities in our scientific expertise and research excellence, and disseminate our knowledge and research outputs to drive health improvements and influence policy decisions. Our local and global partnerships with academic, business, government and community stakeholders are key to effective KE. In the past three years we have been at the forefront of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as continuing to work on the impact of climate and environmental change on health, infectious and chronic diseases, and harnessing the potential of data science. Our global reach was highlighted in the 2022 CWTS Leiden Ranking, where LSHTM is first in the UK and 10th in the world for the proportion of our research which includes international collaboration.
Underpinning these activities is stakeholder engagement across all stages of the research cycle to foster trust, ensure relevance, and empower communities. Capacity strengthening is a strong element in many of our collaborations, with opportunities for all partners to learn from each other and together create sustainable change. We are committed to making our outputs openly available and were ranked 1st in the World for publishing open access research (2022 CWTS Leiden Ranking). Our KE activities also incorporate entrepreneurship, consultancy, contract research, and commercialisation including the development of spinouts, supported by our specialist and high quality infrastructure. We deliver critical services to our local communities, with diagnostic services delivered across our sites and clinical services delivered in The Gambia and Uganda. Support for KE activity is embedded across LSHTM with dedicated research support services and a specialist public engagement team.
We develop highly skilled future health leaders, managers and researchers who contribute to the global advancement of medical and health sciences through our flexible education and leadership programmes which nurture scientific talent across career stages, We have more than 1,200 face-to-face Master's and Doctoral students, 3,800 studying by distance learning, and over 500 each year on short courses and continuous professional development. Our free online courses are studied by more than 300,000 participants globally.
LSHTM draws on our broad range of KE activities to rapidly respond to global health crises, developing innovative cross sector programmes for major health threats, as exemplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we continue to face existing and emerging global health challenges, LSHTM’s mission remains as relevant today as when we were founded.
For further information, please send queries to innovation@lshtm.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
LSHTM is unique in being located in the UK, The Gambia and Uganda. We support regional growth through three streams of activities; developing human capital to meet local and regional skills gaps, developing innovative partnerships to strengthen regional capacity and enhancing our infrastructure to deliver critical local and regional services.
Aligned with institutional priorities during the last three years, we have built critical quantitative skills in our regions, developed novel R&D partnerships to address infectious diseases, pandemic preparedness, the impact of climate and environmental change on health, and harnessed the potential of data science. Our infrastructure has been enhanced to build sustainable capacity for innovation and deliver critical services.
Aspect 1: Strategy
LSHTM has a long track record of supporting regional growth through a varied set of activities to develop human capital, through partnership with major regional stakeholders, and by attracting inward investment to develop infrastructure, all in alignment with our mission.
Strategically Relevant Geography: LSHTM is a global institution with core hubs in London and at the MRC Units in The Gambia (MRCG) and Uganda (MRCU), which joined LSHTM in February 2018. LSHTM has physical sites in the UK, East and West Africa and our activities are guided by the needs of local communities in London, in Fajara, Basse and Keneba in The Gambia, and in Entebbe, Kalungu, Masaka, Wakiso and Kampala Districts in Uganda.
Strategic Identification of Need: Our priorities for regional growth and global development were defined in our Institutional Strategy 2017-2022 under the “Innovation & Engagement” pillar, which detailed the aim to carry out “engagement with external audiences, including policymakers, industry partners and the public.” In LSHTM’s Strategy for 2022-27 this is expanded to detail our ambitions to “extend the reach of our mission in the economy and society by continuing to work with a range of external partners including governments, health care providers, third sector institutions, industry and business, civil society and other global institutions”. Growth and development needs vary in our local regions, and we meet these through three unifying streams of activities focused on people, partnership, and place.
The MRCG and MRCU are significant employers within their local regions, acting as regional research and innovation hubs. Both Units prioritise training and development activities to increase capacity in health research in West Africa (MRCG) and East Africa (MRCU). MRCG addresses health issues of priority in The Gambia through strengthening partnerships and engagement with a range of stakeholders, including the Government of The Gambia, the West Africa Global Health Alliance, WHO, and the Economic Community of West African States. In Uganda, MRCU’s researchers participate as members of technical working groups for the Ministries of Health, Gender, Labour and Social Development. In London and the broader UK, priorities are informed through membership of UK advisory bodies, engagement with employers, Greater London Authority, local authorities and civic organisations, other HEIs, clinical networks (UCL Partners, North Thames Applied Research Collaboration), Health Data Research UK and professional organisations (London Higher, BioIndustry Association, National Centre for Universities and Business).
Engagement with stakeholders allows us to target and codevelop activities that are relevant to our local communities so that they have access to skilled staff, an ecosystem of innovators with whom to partner and access to high quality infrastructure, as described below:
People: Nurture talent to improve local and regional health
We draw from, and add to the regional skills base to develop skilled professionals who are able to respond to key health challenges. The focus of our skills development is personalised, advanced training across career stages and is shaped by the challenges facing human health, outlined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Partnerships: Collaborating with local and regional partners to overcome the public health challenges facing our local communities
Working in partnership is central to achieving our mission. Our strategic collaborations in the UK, East and West Africa strengthen local and regional capacity to deliver health and socioeconomic benefits. Over the past three years this has included partnerships to address infectious diseases, pandemic preparedness, the impact of climate and environmental change on health, and harness the potential of data science.
Place: Creating infrastructure for innovation and critical service delivery
Ongoing enhancement of our high quality infrastructure enables us to deliver critical services to our local communities, with diagnostic services delivered across our sites and clinical services delivered in The Gambia and Uganda. We support the local enterprise ecosystem through spinouts from our laboratories in London, and capitalise on emerging techniques in genomics and data science in The Gambia, Uganda and London.
Aspect 2: Activity
As COVID-19 spread globally, LSHTM was in a unique position to provide support at the local, national and international level. Preparing for and responding to epidemics has been an institutional priority since our response to the West Africa Ebola epidemic (2014 to 2016). Our clinically-trained staff and students immediately returned to clinical service, while staff and alumni based in Africa scaled up surveillance, diagnostic and testing capacity, and supported national governments and Ministries of Health on mitigation efforts. LSHTM academics regularly advised government, sitting on the UK Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, and global COVID-19 advisory groups.
Below is a small snapshot of the breadth of activities undertaken.
People: In addition to our well established Masters programmes, LSHTM has over 40 specialist courses ranging from medical statistics to eye health, and clinical trials to build capabilities. During the pandemic, our short course provision adapted to meet the needs and skills gaps of our local and global communities, particularly health professionals. Several new short courses were piloted between 2020 to 2022. These included (i) Introduction to Outbreak Analytics Using R; (ii) Pharmacoepidemiology in the era of COVID-19, (iii) Pandemics: Emergence, Spread and Response, and (iv) Diagnostics for AMR: Building Back Better from the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The MRCG acts a regional health research training hub, drawing on its state-of-the-art Genomics and Data Centre to offers courses on bioinformatics of infectious diseases, and supports skill development through the MRCG West African Research Programme. MRCG also supports short term internships for High School graduates, University students, Visiting scientists, and PhD students from Sub-regional Universities. The Unit supports clinical attachments, inter-laboratory proficiency schemes and the MRCG-West African Health Organisation internship program for young researchers. A new blended E-learning Field Workers Programme provides tools for all MRCG Fieldworkers.
At the MRCU, skills are developed through short courses, professional attachments and electives, increasing the capacity of unit staff and those of partner institutions in Uganda. Skills development includes the Immunology in the Tropics course which has been held 15 times in Uganda, and training students at Masters and PhD level from over 17 African countries.
Partnerships: LSHTM collaborated with partners across sectors to grow capacity and capabilities in pandemic preparedness, tackling infectious diseases and climate change to improve the health and social outcomes of local, regional and global communities as shown by the examples below:
Partnerships with local & regional stakeholders:
LSHTM was a founding partner in OpenSAFELY, a secure, open-source software platform developed in 2020 for analysis of electronic health records data, together with Oxford University and the NHS database providers TTP and EMIS.
The Bloomsbury Set consortium (2018-2022) brought together local London specialist HEIs, regional partners and industry to tackle infectious diseases.
LSHTM continued to be a key partner in the NIHR School for Public Health Research (NIHR SPHR) and support local public health practitioners and policy makers to engage with research. LSHTM joined the Universities Policy Engagement Network in 2021 to further strengthen connections to policy makers.
The MRCG built strategic partnerships with Université Cheikh Anta Diop and the Institute de Recherche en Santé de Surveillance Epidémiogique et de Formation through the West Africa Global Health Alliance to develop the next generation of West African scientists.
Partnerships with industry & third sector organisations:
In 2021, LSHTM launched a new centre of innovation to tackle antimicrobial resistance and tuberculosis through the inaugural Johnson & Johnson Center for Global Health Discovery in London.
In 2022, the partnership between LSHTM and Reckitt expanded to launch the Reckitt Hygiene Forum, which will provide state-of-the-art facilities for hygiene research in London and for collaboration with global partners.
International Partnerships with governmental & intergovernmental agencies:
The UK-Public Health Rapid Support Team (UK-PHRST), jointly run by LSHTM and the UK Health Security Agency, rapidly deploys staff to prevent local disease outbreaks from becoming global epidemics. During the pandemic, staff supported the COVID-19 response at Africa Centres for Disease Control in Ethiopia, WHO Western Pacific Regional Office in the Philippines, and WHO Nepal.
LSHTM teams also provided scientific expertise to the Hygiene and Behaviour Change Coalition to combat COVID-19. This GBP100,000,000 programme led by the UK government and Unilever provided technical support, hygiene promotion materials, soap and sanitiser to low-resource settings.
In 2021, LSHTM’s Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health became an official WHO Collaborating Centre, the first to support WHO’s work on climate change.
LSHTM built further local, national and global connections through our interdisciplinary School Centres, launching a new Centre for Epidemic Preparedness and Response in 2022.
Place: Infrastructure played a critical role in our response to COVID-19. In Uganda, MRCU researchers generated the first Ugandan SARS-CoV-2 full genomes through rapid local sequencing, helping to monitor spread of the virus, and provided genotype data for South Sudan and Burundi. In The Gambia, the MRCG ran the country’s only COVID-19 diagnostics centre during the early stages of the pandemic, until June 2020 when the National Public Health Laboratories began testing. MRCG also rapidly built three facilities to increase the number of hospital beds providing crucial clinical care for COVID-19 patients and produced 3D-printed PPE and cloth face masks in collaboration with local businesses (e.g. Make3D).
We also enriched our spatial capital at all our sites with sustainable new infrastructure to enhance innovation and service delivery.
London:
Our Keppel Street site in London hosts specialist services including the Malaria Reference Laboratory providing diagnostic testing and surveillance data on all imported malaria reported in the UK, and the Diagnostic Parasitology Laboratory, which provides diagnoses to local and national health practitioners. Our high quality facilities also support the development of spinout and start up enterprises emerging from our research activities. Infrastructure is being enhanced through GPB35,000,000 of investment for the Keppel Street site.
Capacity has been increased through construction of the Tavistock Place 2 building in London to act as a local hub for cross cutting R&D. Completed during 2022, this regenerated the site of a derelict dairy, supported by a GBP7,500,000 grant from the HEFCE catalyst fund and philanthropic donations.
The Gambia:
The MRCG Himsworth Laboratory acts as the WHO Regional Reference Laboratory to support the surveillance network for Invasive Bacterial Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in the WHO African Region.
The MRCG facilities were enhanced through a new state-of-the-art Molecular Biology Laboratory Building in Fajara in 2021. This provides new facilities for molecular clinical diagnostics and molecular research to underpin regional efforts to improve health.
Uganda:
The MRCU houses the Uganda Medical Informatics Centre, one of the largest health research-orientated computational resources in Sub Saharan Africa.
The MRCU unveiled a state-of-the-art clinical research facility in Entebbe in 2022. The solar-powered facility will be used to conduct clinical research, strengthen the MRCU as a local training hub, and facilitate the development of best practices in the management and conduct of clinical trials.
LSHTM is committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2030 and identified actions to enable this in our Energy and Carbon Management Plan. Supporting this goal, the MRCG inaugurated the largest solar power generation system in The Gambia in 2019, the MRCU installed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems across three field stations in Entebbe, Masaka, and Kyamulibwa in 2021, and LSHTM took part in the Platinum Jubilee Challenge in 2022.
Aspect 3: Results
Outputs & outcomes:
Results are communicated via the LSHTM website and social media channels, as well as targeted reports, newsletters, engagement with our partners both in-person and virtually and through LSHTM Data Compass, a curated digital repository. Below we highlight examples of results in key areas.
People:
Training future health leaders, managers and researchers is critical to delivering LSHTM’s mission to improve health worldwide. LSHTM’s short courses provided global professional development for 1803 participants between 2019 to 2022, while a new Masters level course in Health Data Science addressed local and national quantitative skills gaps. The commitment of our students and alumni to improving local and global health was shown when more than 1,200 volunteered to support rapid data work in response to the pandemic. Outputs included a WHO database of global interventions in response to the pandemic.
Supporting talented students has contributed to closing the gender gap in STEM, particularly in Africa. Only 30% of science professionals in sub-Saharan Africa are women, while in 2021, 37% of Masters and 55% of PhD students trained through MRCG were female and ~40% of Masters and PhD students were female in MRCU. LSHTM was ranked first in the UK for the proportion of academic research with women listed as authors in the 2022 CWTS Leiden Ranking.
Partnership:
During the pandemic, the UK-PHRST developed the knowledge sharing hub for researchers and policy makers to share resources, evidence and best practice to respond to outbreaks.
The Hygiene and Behaviour Change Coalition reached more than a billion people by 2021.
OpenSAFELY researchers drew on 58 million people’s health records to provide key evidence on age, disability and ethnicity as risk factors for COVID-19.
The Reckitt partnership supported four new PhD studentships and two seed grants for early career researchers to advance hygiene research.
The Bloomsbury Set consortium supported GBP1,400,000 of awards to LSHTM to progress the development of drugs and diagnostics for infectious diseases, enabled by engagement with partners including Salvenis, Medical Detection Dogs and Luminex.
NIHR SPHR provided evidence to support Transport for London restricting the advertisement of high fat sugar and salt foods.
The success of our partnerships is shown by the 2022 CWTS Leiden Ranking, where LSHTM claimed first position in the UK and 10th in the world for the proportion of our research which includes international collaborators.
Place:
Our laboratory infrastructure and facilities enable the delivery of high quality services to local and regional partners and augment our spinout activity.
In London, the Malaria Reference Laboratory performs approximately 1500 confirmations and diagnoses annually, while the Diagnostic Parasitology Laboratory performs approximately 2000 diagnoses on a wide range of specimens and parasites annually.
Spinouts and startups launched during 2019 to 2022 include Arctech Innovations (development and evaluation of new technologies for the surveillance and control of diseases), ArkVax (vaccine candidate development) and the Sustainable Climate Impact Fund, a social enterprise which aims to reduce the environmental, social and economic effects of climate change on rural communities in low and middle income countries through targeted projects and interventions.
In Uganda, two MRCU clinical research laboratories in Entebbe and Masaka were ranked among the top five in Africa by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative in March 2022. They provide clinical services to Ugandan facilities including the Lancet Laboratory and Mbarara Eye Care Project in Mbarara Hospital, supporting the health and wellbeing of local communities.
MRCG students won the top prize in the 2022 Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Student Challenge with a project to enhance the Unit’s sustainability through innovative waste recycling.
Recognition of impact:
The impact of our contributions to society was recognised when LSHTM was ranked first for the key measure of impact and joint 10th overall of all universities in the UK, in tables published by the Times Higher Education. This highlights the strength of our research outputs, our partnerships and their impact locally and globally on people’s health and society.
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
Our spectrum of public and community engagement activities empowers global communities to improve health in the UK and worldwide. Working across the research cycle from priority setting, through design and delivery of research, to dissemination, we rapidly respond to community needs. This was shown during the COVID-19 pandemic when the LSHTM community informed, consulted and collaborated globally, rapidly reaching over 200,000 people through accessible activities. Engagement also explored the lasting impacts of infectious diseases on health, the power of big data for disease diagnosis and care, and innovative solutions to address climate change. Activities are supported by dedicated staff and resources, regularly adapted to ensure that engagement is inclusive, relevant and delivers tangible impact to improve global health.
Aspect 1: Strategy
LSHTM carries out a broad spectrum of public and community engagement activities which inform, consult and collaborate to empower global communities relevant to our research, including publics, practitioners, policy makers, and other decision-making bodies.
Strategic Approach: Public and community engagement (hereafter referred to as PE) was prioritised as one of our five strategic pillars ‘Innovation & Engagement’ in the 2017-2022 institutional strategy and embedded within knowledge exchange in our 2022-2027 strategy. Activities are underpinned by our 2018-2022 Public Engagement Strategic Action Plan, synthesised through a large scoping exercise, carried out as part of LSHTM’s UKRI Strategic Support to Expedite Embedding of Public engagement with Research (SEE-PER) Grant.
Priorities & identification of relevant communities: The PE action plan steers the LSHTM-wide approach to PE through five guiding principles:
Public engagement contributes to high-quality, impactful research
Public engagement enriches the learning experience
Public engagement enhances staff expertise and recognition
Public engagement strengthens partnerships and builds new ones
Public engagement maximises the reach and influence of our research
This aligns with three strategic aims for 2018-2022:
Excel at developing and delivering high quality public engagement.
Empower staff and doctoral students with the skills and confidence to engage effectively.
Recognise and celebrate the diverse impacts that public engagement can have on our audiences, partners, research, skills development, and in achieving LSHTM’s mission.
These aims are delivered through structured support, training, evaluation and shared learning across London and the LSHTM/MRC Units in Uganda (MRCU) and The Gambia (MRCG). Relevant communities are identified for each project and opportunities explored for working in partnership with our researchers across the research cycle from priority setting, through design and delivery of research to knowledge exchange. LSHTM prioritises institutional activities that ‘consult’ or ‘collaborate’ with relevant global audiences.
At the programme level, the DEPTH (Dialogue, Evidence, Participation and Translation for Health) group conducts research to understand the implications and effects of community involvement and dialogue in promoting health and shares learning across LSHTM. Strategic Programmes, such as the NIHR Health Protection Units in Immunisation and Environmental Change and Health have local engagement strategies tailored to the requirements of their research areas. LSHTM’s 13 interdisciplinary Centres carry out PE activities aligned with their research themes. Activities are undertaken in alignment with LSHTM’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy including a focus on developing more equitable partnerships for research and education.
Governance: The action plan is delivered by a dedicated PE team, whose activities are overseen by the Director of Communications and Engagement, a member of LSHTM’s Executive Team. The Executive Team is the principal body for the management and leadership of LSHTM and is responsible for the delivery of our institutional strategy.
Resourcing: Core funding provides support for LSHTM public engagement staff, training, and development of materials including case studies and guidance documents for the public facing internet and the LSHTM community intranet.
Aspect 2: Support
Our PE strategy is delivered through key support roles who provide bespoke facilitation, seed funding, training, peer networks and online resources.
Support infrastructure: Institutional activities are supported through core funds for dedicated PE staff and seed grants, and external sources including funding from a Wellcome Institutional Strategic Support Fund, specific Wellcome public engagement enrichment grants (funding totalling GBP464,447 between 2019 and 2022) and philanthropic donations.
External insight and input are provided through the PE Advisory Group, made up of academic and support staff, doctoral students, and external members. Resources include an external facing webpage showcasing examples of engagement and an internal facing intranet site which provides guides on planning and evaluating public engagement. LSHTM’s active social media presence (260,000 followers across @LSHTM Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram) provides external audiences with targeted information about our engagement activities, news, and campaigns. The PE team’s dedicated webpage signposts the public on how they can engage with our research and researchers in the community, classroom and online.
Seed funding through LSHTM’s annual PE Grants Scheme provides awards of GBP1,000 to GBP5,000. Twenty eight projects were supported between 2019 and 2022, spanning our priority areas.
Training is provided by the PE team and external facilitators and covers; introductions to PE, public and patient involvement, online facilitation, meaningful online engagement, gamifications in PE and co-production. The importance of EDI is emphasised in our training, and we offer advice to researchers to ensure their PE approach is inclusive, codeveloped with people of relevant backgrounds and reaches diverse audiences. A Peer Network composed of over 70 staff and students provides a forum for experience sharing.
Recognition: P&CE has been embedded within yearly staff reviews and in Academic Promotions as an example of external citizenship since 2015. LSHTM’s academic expectations recognise the value of engagement with public/policy/practice/industry/NGO communities, with increasing emphasis on external citizenship as seniority increases. PE was recognised through Directors awards to staff in 2019 and 2020.
Aspect 3: Activity
PE activities at LSHTM span the bench to bedside pipeline, connected through the common purpose of improving global health. Our engagement activities inform, consult, and collaborate, swiftly evolving as community needs change.
This was aptly demonstrated during 2020 to 2022, when the LSHTM community rapidly pivoted activities to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As understanding of COVID-19 was initially low, activities focused on informing publics through accessible resources including:
The COVID-19: Tackling the Novel Coronavirus Massive Open Online Course, which provided information about the outbreak and its global implications to more than 200,000 people around the world.
LSHTM Viral podcast, rapidly developed in 2020 to explain the science behind outbreaks. This had 184,000 episode plays across 170 countries around the world.
The Vaccine Confidence project working with YouTube and Klick Health to create “Community Unity” to tackle misinformation about vaccination.
Researchers at MRCU and the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Immunisation engaging with open science events to address risks and benefits of vaccination in local communities.
Contributing to books for children to explain COVID-19 in an age appropriate way (Dr. Dog and ‘Coronavirus: a book for children’).
Policy, practice, and public communities were informed through:
Participation in the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies and its subgroups, providing real time data to the UK government to enable resource planning.
Free online tools: Outbreak tracker, COVID-19 vaccine development tracker, and C19economics platform to support global policymakers and researchers.
As the pandemic evolved, opportunities to consult and collaborate with our communities were prioritised as described below.
Collaboration with global alumni: Responding to requests from our alumni who wanted to get involved in tackling COVID-19, LSHTM launched an innovative, new volunteer hub. Alumni, staff and students volunteered for a crowdsourcing, rapid data project and used their expertise to build a database of every COVID-19 intervention globally for the WHO.
Coproduction with young people: When survey results in the UK showed that young people were struggling under lockdown measures, LSHTM researchers accessed dedicated COVID-19 seed funding to develop “Together In Spirit: A video to support social distancing among young people in the UK”. UK residents aged 16-24 submitted short, self-shot videos in which they shared challenges, coping strategies, and what motivated them to adhere to social distancing measures. The videos were curated into a video montage which was shared across social media.
Although the pandemic presented an unprecedented threat to human health, our engagement activities, aligned with our existing research priorities also continued. This included participatory workshops, creative arts, and festivals, spanning infectious and chronic diseases, data science, and climate change as illustrated below.
The burden of the infectious disease, tuberculosis (TB) was explored in The Gambia, where MRCG researchers convened a 3-day TB participatory workshop in 2021. This brought together researchers, former TB patients, TB-affected families, TB advocacy organisations, and selected policymakers from across West Africa to provide insights into household-incurred costs and strategies adopted for coping with persistent health impairments due to TB. Working with the Bolivian Community in London, the “Mal de Chagas Londrespis kan (Chagas disease is in London too)” project developed an online forum where researchers gained an understanding of effective engagement with this population. In Uganda, engagement with seldom heard communities supported work on addressing the burden of schistosomiasis, caused by parasitic worms.
The power of big data was highlighted during the 'Cancer Revolution' Science Museum Late event. LSHTM staff and students explained why data is so important for advancing cancer treatment, tackling inequalities, and improving patient outcomes. Data also underpinned the Colouring Adult Eczema: Getting Under the Skin project, which brought together adults living with direct, or indirect experience, of eczema. Collective artwork was developed to show the diverse experiences of adult eczema and displayed in Glasgow during 2022.
The impacts of climate change on diverse communities were examined in the UK’s first citizens’ assembly in 2020, with participation from LSHTM staff. The Climate Assembly brought together 108 assembly members from across the UK to consider how the UK should reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The MRCG, in collaboration with the Gambian Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, held a 2-day Climate Change Solutions Festival in 2021. Over 600 students from 10 junior schools in The Gambia were invited to come up with solutions and ideas on how to combat human impact on the environment.
Engagement with young people spans LSHTM’s research themes. Engagement has been nested in research programmes such as “Zvatinoda” where a Youth Advisory Panel produced a short film (ZVATINODA "WHAT WE WANT") that communicates the health needs and preferences of young people, while the “Art of Health” initiative in Zimbabwe uses the creative arts (music, drama, art and dance) to engage young people on matters pertaining to their health and well-being, and received over 1000 entries to its nation-wide art competition in 2021. In London, our young scientist programme, provided students aged 14-18 from state school with opportunities to spend 1-2 weeks at LSHTM where they are immersed into health research.
PE has also been a route to inspire dialogue on positionality, privileges, and power dynamics in global public health. During the Light up LSHTM: Shining light on the decolonising global public health movement project, LSHTM researchers and Studio Lou co-led an interactive workshop within LSHTM to solicit views on decolonizing global public health. Inspiring individuals were identified who should be recognized through portraits and these were projected onto the façade of the school as part of the Bloomsbury Festival in October 2021, encouraging the public to join the conversation on decolonizing global health.
Aspect 4: Enhancing practice
Monitoring & Evaluation: LSHTM has an institution wide evaluation framework for PE which was developed during the course of LSHTM’s UKRI SEE-PER grant with support from an external evaluation specialist. The framework evaluates the outputs and outcomes of activities against the five key principles of the PE action plan (defined in Aspect 1). Using this framework, the PE team systematically log internal and external interactions, training, funding applications, reward, and recognition with regular reflection on activities. This informs the team’s activities and training schedules, enabling us to track progress, identify gaps, and determine where best to use resources.
Results show the increasing reach of PE training, with over 200 staff and students participating between 2019 and 2022, and the increasing attendance at our free public lectures with 24,814 participants in 2019/20, rising to 28,911 in 2020/21 (HE Provider Data: Business and Community Interaction survey data). Institutional surveys including the Culture, Employment and Development in Academic Research Survey (CEDARS) benchmark staff interest in PE (59% of respondents in 2021 were interested in PE).
Monitoring and evaluation also occurs at the individual project level, supported by LSHTM’s Evaluating PE Guide, which provides examples of evaluation methods as in Figure 2:
Figure : Examples of evaluation methods
Engagement activities supported through internal seed funding are required to submit a final report where they detail their outputs, impact, and lessons learned. Supported by the PE team, awardees reflect on the impact of projects on the participants, project partners and researchers involved, the project legacy and next steps. This project level evaluation can deliver immediate and longer term impact. For example, the “Mal de Chagas Londrespis kan” project team are drawing on insights from their engagement activities to make their future research plans more sensitive to community’s needs.
Review of activities enables us to annually develop stories of engagement, written by LSHTM researchers, the PE team or members of community to chronicle some of the many ways that we engage publics with our research.
Aspect 5: Building on success
Governance & Accountability: Outputs and impact are monitored by dedicated PE staff and reported quarterly at the PE Advisory Group. PE practitioners from other organisations are members of the advisory group enabling external scrutiny of our approach and progress against the PE action plan. Community Advisory Boards also provide project input and feedback at the Units.
The Director of Communications and Engagement is a member of the PE Advisory Group and provides quarterly reports to executive team members, ensuring PE activities align with LSHTM’s institutional priorities and strategy. The Executive Team then reports institutional activities, including PE, to the governing Council, as shown in Figure 3. Activities are showcased through Annual Reports and Unit newsletters.
Learning from results: Over the last three years, monitoring outputs has shown progress against the key principles of the PE action plan, including:
Contributing to high quality impactful research (Pillar 1,5), evidenced by qualitative case studies.
Increasing awareness of PE support/training and a broader representation of the LSHTM community engaged in PE (Pillar 1, 2).
Engagement with a wide range of external partners to deliver PE projects (Pillar 4)
Increased recognition of the value of PE through dedicated Directors Awards for PE during 2019 and 2020 and regularly showcasing “Stories of Engagement” (Pillar 3)
As a result of ongoing evaluation we enhanced our training and support during 2019 to 2022:
Provided dedicated PE funds for COVID-19 related engagement (Strategic Aim 1).
Tailored our training provision to empower staff and students (Strategic Aim 2) through new sessions on online engagement and coproduction.
Supported the development of a new staff award on Knowledge Exchange and Innovation (Strategic Aim 3) to launch in late 2022.
Internal reviews of activities are also validated by external reviews and recognition of the value and impact of our activities:
The LSHTM Viral Podcast won the CASE Circle of Excellence Award for Podcasts in 2021 for exploring the Science Behind Public and Global Health.
LSHTM’s alumni crowdsourcing activity won the Gold award for Best Alumni Initiative at the 2021 HEIST Awards
LSHTM’s Communications team was shortlisted for ‘Outstanding Marketing/Communications Team’ at the Times Higher Awards 2022 for work in 2020/21 to serve the public in the pandemic era.
LSHTM was awarded a prestigious Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for its world-leading work on COVID-19 in 2021.
The outputs and outcomes of our activities are shared through our accessible engagement webpages, project specific webpages, and social media channels, showing the transformative impact of our engagement.
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