Evidence Centre Symposium - Evidence to impact for a healthier Wales

Evidence to impact for a healthier Wales

The Health and Care Research Wales Evidence Centre will hold its biennial Symposium on Wednesday 19th March 2025, introduced by Jeremy Miles MS, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care.

The Symposium will highlight impact from the Evidence Centre and other research groups in Wales, and support attendees to develop focused research questions with a pathway to impact, to submit to the Evidence Centre’s next call for evidence needs.

Plenary session speakers will include:

• Professor Liz Green | Consultant in Public Health, Programme Director for Health Impact Assessments and Honorary Professor at Liverpool University
• Iain Bell | National Director for Public Health Knowledge & Research, Public Health Wales
• Dr Helen Munro | Clinical Lead for the Strategic Clinical Network for Women’s Health, NHS Executive

The Symposium will be a full-day (10:00 – 15:00), in-person session at the Holiday Inn Cardiff City Centre.

The Symposium is fully booked. 

Please email - healthandcareevidence@cardiff.ac.uk  - to be added to the waiting list.

Programme 

09.30      Registration and refreshments

10:00      Welcome | Professor Adrian Edwards, Evidence Centre Director

10:05      Opening Address | Jeremy Miles MS, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care

10:15      Plenary 1 |  Professor Liz Green, Consultant in Public Health, Programme Director for Health Impact Assessments and Honorary Professor at Liverpool University

               Setting the scene: Public Health, Evidence and Impact

10:30      Introducing the Evidence Centre and breakout sessions | Dr Alison Cooper, Evidence Centre Associate Director

10:45      Refreshment break 

11:00      Parallel Presentations and Workshops:

Morning workshop theme: What is your evidence need and how would this be used?

Parallel Presentations: 

• High Quality Services -  What do the Welsh public understand about NHS dental services, what do they think it could look like, and what are their priorities? (Evidence Centre)
• Women’s Health - Supporting women, girls and people who menstruate to participate in physical activity. (Cardiff Evidence Synthesis Collaborative, Cardiff University). Fully booked.
• Mental Health and Wellbeing - Wellness in work - supporting people in work and assisting people to return to the workforce. (Centre for Health Economics and Medicines Evaluation, Bangor University)
• Children and Social Care - Involving families in decision making with Family Group Conferencing. (Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre - CASCADE )

12:00      Lunch 

12:55      Welcome back | Professor Adrian Edwards, Evidence Centre Director

13:00      Plenary 2 | Iain Bell, National Director for Public Health Knowledge & Research, Public Health Wales

               Data, Knowledge and Information: Understanding Public Health in real time

13:15      Introducing the breakout sessions | Dr Ruth Lewis, Evidence Centre Associate Director 

13:25      Parallel Presentations and Workshops:

Afternoon workshop theme: How to develop a good research question for the Evidence Centre. 

Parallel Presentations:

• Waiting Lists - Risk Prediction tools for surgical hubs. (Evidence Service, Public Health Wales)
• Children and Young People - Factors associated with overweight or obesity in children under five years old. (Health Technology Wales)
• Primary and Community Care - End of Life and Palliative Care Data Science. (Population Data Science, Swansea University)
• Wider Determinants of Health -  Building a research culture through the Health Determinants Research Collaboration. (Dan Bristow, Wales Centre for Public Policy and Zoe Lancelott, Rhondda Cynon Taf Council)

14:25      Plenary 3 | Dr Helen Munro, Clinical Lead for the Strategic Clinical Network for Women’s Health, NHS Executive

               The Women's Health Plan for Wales - What next? Filling the gaps and paving new pathways in research

14:40      Closing remarks |  Professor Adrian Edwards, Evidence Centre Director

14:45      Refreshments and networking 

15:00      Symposium ends 

Plenary Speaker's Biographies 

Professor Liz Green, Consultant in Public Health, Programme Director for Health Impact Assessments and Honorary Professor at Liverpool University

 Liz is a Consultant in Public Health for Policy and International Health and the Programme Director for HIA at Public Health Wales (PHW). She is an   Honorary Visiting Professor at the Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool and holds a PhD in ‘Health Impact Assessment   (HIA) as a tool to mobilise Health in all Policies’ from Maastricht University, The Netherlands. She has extensive experience in HIA, ‘Health in All   Policies’ including incorporating health into spatial planning processes and plans, and provides training, advice and guidance about HIA and other IA   processes. 

Liz has worked on approximately over 500 HIAs of varying strategic levels, complexity and topics including the comprehensive ‘The Public Health Implications of Brexit in Wales: A HIA Approach’ (PHW, 2019) and the ‘Health Impact Assessment of Climate Change in Wales (PHW, 2023). She has been recognized as a Woman of Influence 2022 by RTPI Planner for her work in Spatial Planning and Public Health and has published extensively on HIA. She is also the lead for the International Health Co-ordinating Centre in Public Health Wales.

Iain Bell, National Director for Public Health Knowledge & Research, Public Health Wales 

Iain Bell joined the Public Health Wales in July 2021 from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) where, as Deputy National Statistician for Population and Public Policy, he was responsible for delivering the 2021 Census in England and Wales. Having spent most of his career working on the wider determinants of health he says he already feels at home here at Public Health Wales.

Iain’s role encompasses data, knowledge and research, and he brings his experience working through the pandemic at the ONS to this post, which will further develop the public’s appetite for innovative data sources, real-time information and awareness of public health.

Dr Helen Munro, Clinical Lead for the Strategic Clinical Network for Women’s Health, NHS Executive

Helen is a Consultant in Community Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare with Hywel Dda University Health Board (HDUHB), SW Wales. From April   2024 she has been seconded to the NHS Executive as Clinical Lead for the Strategic Clinical Network for Women’s Health and lead the   development of the first Women’s Health Plan for Wales, published on the 10th December 2024 The Women's Health Plan for Wales - NHS Wales Executive. She also continues to work clinically as a Specialist in Menopause Care.

Helen is involved as an academic researcher and is co-applicant on multiple projects across the UK and Wales and was awarded the prestigious Health and Care Research Wales, Research Time Award, 2023-2026. She is Co-Chief Investigator on the ESTEEM trial which aims to find out if adding testosterone to standard Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) can reduce menopausal symptoms beyond its effect on sexual function (libido) ESTEEM - Centre for Trials Research - Cardiff University. In 2023 Helen was conferred the title of Honorary Professor, at Aberystwyth University and holds an honorary role at Cardiff University in the Division of Population Health.

External Presenters   

Zoe Lancelott, Head of the Rhondda Cynon Taf Health Determinants Research Collaboration

Zoe has over 30 years experience of delivering and managing services for children, young people and families in the public, private and voluntary sectors. Living and working in the South Wales Valleys, Zoe has a keen interest in the role of early intervention and prevention in reducing barriers to education, engagement and opportunity faced by individuals and communities and redressing health inequalities. 

To her role as the Head of the Rhondda Cynon Taf Health Determinants Research Collaboration, Zoe brings a proven track record of strong strategic leadership, partnership working, delivering multi-million pound change programmes across local government services and public and third sector partners and transforming traditional Council services within both Education and Social Care spheres to deliver measurable outcomes for children, young people and families. 

Dan Bristow, Professor of Practice at Cardiff University, and Director of the Wales Centre for Public Policy

As Co-Investigator at the WCPP, he has helped to establish the Centre’s award-winning, demand-led approach to mobilising research evidence. He has led the design and delivery of a model that supports Welsh Government Ministers, and public sector leaders to access, understand and use the best available evidence.

He is also Joint Lead of the NIHR Health Determinants Research Collaboration Rhondda Cynon Taf – a £5million investment which will create new infrastructure to link research to policy and practice, and bring together 
individuals and organisations with the clear aim of improving the health outcomes of Rhondda Cynon Taf residents.

He started his career working in the UK civil service and third sector organisations. Over the last decade, he has worked at the interface between academic evidence and public policy / public sector decision-making.

Lorna Stabler, Research Fellow, Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre, Cardiff University

Lorna is an experienced social work researcher based at the Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre (CASCADE), Cardiff University. She is also the Senior Kinship Fellow at Foundations – What Works Centre for Children & Families with a focus on developing the evidence based around what works to support kinship care, and will start as the Health and Social Care Research Wales Speciality Lead for Social Care in April. Her research aims to build an understanding of how families and their networks can be better supported and engaged so that children can remain safely within their communities. She has recently completed a project which explored the potential of using FGCs as an alternative to Child Protection Conferences, and is currently leading a project focusing on special guardianship orders in Wales. She is passionate about working in partnership with people with lived experience of social work involvement within her own research practice.