We’re excited to share our evaluation of the Shaping Places for Healthier Lives (SPHL) England programme – a three-year initiative (2021–2024) funded by the Health Foundation and delivered with the Local Government Association.

SPHL supported five local authority-led teams to apply complex systems approaches to tackle public health challenges in their local areas, including food security, mental health, and fear of violence and crime.

As independent Learning & Research Partners, Cordis Bright, PPL and Cobic explored how these teams developed their own complex system approaches with a view to creating long-term, system-wide change.

Key insights:

• Complex systems approaches can be impactful: A complex system approach can be applied to systems of different sizes and configurations.
• Taking a complex system approach is challenging: It’s especially hard to create the time to step back and reflect on the system as a whole, when local authorities and their partners are under so much pressure to deliver.
• Challenges can be overcome with the right support: With the right mix of skills and attitudes in the project team, a supportive local policy environment and back from strategic system leaders, it is possible to apply complex system approach to public health challenges.

The learning from SPHL England provides a roadmap for future initiatives supporting the use of complex system change approaches.