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Shaping Places for Healthier Lives

Shaping Places for Healthier Lives

Evaluation. Complex systems. Public health. Health Foundation. LGA. Design Council.

Shaping Places for Healthier Lives (SPHL) was a three-year programme which ran from October 2021 to August 2024. It was funded by the Health Foundation and delivered with the Local Government Association (LGA), with additional support from the Design Council.

The programme supported five local authority-led teams to take a complex systems approach to a public health challenge in their area, with projects spanning food security, mental health, and fear of violence and crime. The local authorities were:

  • Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire Councils
  • Doncaster Council
  • London Borough of Newham
  • Northumberland County Council
  • Shropshire County Council

Cordis Bright, PPL and Cobic were commissioned to be the independent Learning and Research Partners for the programme. We worked with the sites to understand how they were each using complex system approaches to change their local systems.

Key lessons from this programme included:

  • Complex systems approaches can be impactful. They can have value across a range of geographies and modest resources can drive system changes in a short time to tackle different wider determinants.
  • Taking a complex system approach is challenging: it’s not easy to adopt a complex systems approach and not all aspects of a complex systems approach were adopted by all of the local authority led partnerships. 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.

If you would like to discuss Shaping Places for Healthier Lives and our work on systems change more broadly, please contact Joshua Butt or Dr Natalie Savona.

Resources

SPHL summative report