Lancaster University has been awarded £850,000 by the National Institute for Health Research’s School for Public Health Research (SPHR).

Chief Investigators on the grant are Professor Heather Brown, Professor of Health Inequalities, and Professor Bruce Hollingsworth, Director of Health Economics, both based in the Division of Health Research in the Faculty of Health and Medicine.

The award is part of the LiLaC SPHR Collaboration between Lancaster and Liverpool Universities and examines how resources for public health can be efficiently allocated across different partners including the NHS, local authorities and the VCSFE sector.

Professor Brown said: “We are using a co-production approach to bring together all stakeholders across the system to support the efficient allocation of resources."

The project will carry out research to understand what options are available across a range of funding, including public health, housing, and transport and infrastructure, and how these resources can most usefully be allocated based on the needs of local populations in terms of investing in more efficient allocation over the longer term.

Professor Hollingsworth said: “This grant will look at local needs, using data at a local level to develop responsive funding formulas across a range of activities which can feed into improving public health, ensuring increasingly scarce resources are used as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

As well as LiLaC, the project will be delivered in collaboration with researchers across the national SPHR Economics Network.