Emerging priorities
Green health prescribing
Green Health Prescribing is when healthcare professionals recommend activities related to nature to — like walking in parks, gardening, or outdoor exercise — instead of medications to support people’s health and wellbeing. These activities are becoming more popular, especially for older adults, as they may improve physical, mental, and social health.
HDRC collaborators are carrying out a systematic review to investigate the health benefits and access to green health prescribing in primary care for older adults living in deprived areas. The review has been registered on the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO). The systematic review has been completed, and is available as a pre-print. This means the findings are available to read, although the report has not yet been peer-reviewed, and may not be the final version.
Improving access to nature and green spaces
Green spaces are natural areas like parks, forests, gardens, countryside or sports areas. To improve access to green spaces, Coventry has been awarded funding from the National Lottery as part of the Nature in Towns and Cities programme. Hosted by Coventry City Council in collaboration with local universities and voluntary sector partners, the programme is to build partnerships, skills, and involvement of local communities to improve green spaces in the city. The HDRC team are currently carrying out a research study to understand how the programme progresses, and what it achieves. This study, running from 2025 to 2028, has received ethical approval from the HDRC ethics committee.
Coventry Grows evaluation
Coventry Grows is a community growing project funded by the Council’s strategic energy partner E.ON. HDRC Research Fellows are contributing to an evaluation of Coventry Grows, working and connecting with academics from Coventry University and the Climate Change and Sustainability team at Coventry City Council. The HDRC Research Fellows have facilitated connections between Coventry City Council and academics from The Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University. The Research Fellows have also informed methodology for the evaluation, supporting the development of interview schedules for qualitative evaluation, and suggesting robust and reliable scales for small level quantitative evaluation of the Coventry Grows sites across Coventry.
An Early Intervention Team Co-located at a Police Station to Respond to Domestic Abuse in Coventry: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation
Public health team at the Council commissioned an early intervention to support domestic abuse survivors who made call outs to the police at an earlier stage of incidents in 2021. The early intervention was implemented through embedding two domestic abuse support workers from Coventry Haven Women’s Aid and one support worker from Panahghar in a police station in Coventry. A mixed-methods evaluation report was produced to showcase the benefits and space for improvement of the intervention. These findings were shared widely with the government and charitable organisations involved in domestic abuse-related support provision across the West Midlands. One significant impact of the evaluation report was that its findings enabled Coventry Haven Women’s Aid to secure an additional three years of funding from the National Lotteries to extend the intervention from 2025 to 2028.
Qualitative findings from the evaluation were developed in a research paper and published in the Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Peer-reviewed journal publications usually take a considerable amount of time to complete. The publication of this paper was enabled by Coventry HDRC extending the employment contract of the lead researcher Eve Wang. This evaluation highlights the advantages of integrating rigorous research into service evaluations within a local authority setting. The challenges it presented align with the priorities of Coventry HDRC, such as fostering a research culture across organisations from different sectors.
The article is published in Criminology and Criminal Justice. If you are interested to discuss further, please contact Eve Wang at Eve.Wang@coventry.gov.uk.
The HDRC are also support ongoing work to evaluate other local services and provisions related to domestic abuse.
An Exploration of the Impact of Eco-therapeutic Interventions on Adolescents with Mental Health Issues: Perspectives of Both Adolescents and Parents
Positive Choices delivered a seven-week eco-therapeutic programme for adolescents who experienced mental health problems during the summer holiday in 2022. They were keen to understand the effects of the programme on adolescents’ psychological wellbeing and approached Eve Wang with the research request, who then developed a mixed-methods research study. Nine adolescents participated in the quantitative study, in which experiences of anxiety, depression, and self-esteem were measured by clinical scoring systems longitudinally before and after the programme was completed. Findings suggested that all participants experienced either improved psychological status or that their symptom levels remained the same.
The qualitative study interviewed seven adolescents and their parents about their experiences and perceptions of the adolescents’ engagement in the eco-therapeutic programme. Adolescents were interviewed twice, and an additional adolescent participated in the second set of interviews. Interview data showed that adolescents experienced improved psychological wellbeing during and after the programme. They gained and sustained confidence, skills, and knowledge in managing their emotions and were able to implement this learning in daily life in both school and family settings.
The practice and learning of eco-therapeutic programme have been utilised by wider local authorities, such as Nottingham City Council, who implemented similar programmes within their local communities. The qualitative study was published in the Journal of Creativity in Mental Health and is free to access. Coventry Positive Choices continues to deliver eco-therapeutic programmes. If you are interested in learning more about the programmes and potential research collaboration opportunities, please contact Eve Wang at Eve.Wang@coventry.gov.uk.
Substance misuse mobile outreach review
The HDRC Evidence Synthesis Research Fellow conducted a rapid scoping review on literature evaluating mobile outreach services for substance misuse. The Council’s commissioned drug and alcohol services are delivered by the local charity Change, Grow, Live who planned on delivering a mobile outreach service on a bus to increase accessibility and uptake of services. They wanted to evaluate this service via the NIHR’s Public Health Intervention Responsive Studies Teams (PHIRST) evaluation programme, so requested this evidence review as part of their application. Unfortunately, the PHIRST funding application was unsuccessful, but the evidence review provided useful insight to help shape the delivery of the service. Substance misuse mobile outreach review.docx document?
Physical activity in long-term conditions
The HDRC Evidence Synthesis Research Fellow worked with a GP trainee in the Public Health Team to conduct a rapid evidence review on the benefits of physical activity for patients with long-term conditions, focussing on their existing health condition(s) and their overall physical and mental health. Evidence from this review informed a funding application to Sport England. Physical activity in long term conditions.docx document?