New Net Zero Research Hubs: BR-UK researchers

Seven new transdisciplinary research hubs, funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), will explore ways to ensure the UK’s transition to Net Zero also protects and promotes physical and mental health. 

Each hub will receive funding to deliver high impact research focused on reducing health inequalities and will also undertake research into developing a standardised way to measure the trade-offs and unintended consequences as part of these measures. The hubs are focused around five challenge areas, with significant opportunities to benefit people’s health and reduce the impact on the environment:

• transport and the built environment
• the indoor environment
• sustainable diets
• extreme weather
• decarbonising health and social care pathways

These new research investments align with many of BR-UK’s own research themes, specifically those on environment and sustainability, health and wellbeing, and resilient communities. The One Health Systems Hub also specifically highlights the importance of engagement and involvement through active inclusion of diverse public and stakeholder perspectives in the conversations around sustainable healthcare transition whilst ensuring that the environmentally sustainable solutions for the health sector are accessible, meaningful, and contextually relevant to diverse groups.

The National Research Hub on Net Zero, Health and Extreme Heat (HEARTH)

BR-UK Co-Director, Professor Susan Michie, is an academic co-lead contributing to the National Research Hub on Net Zero, Health and Extreme Heat (HEARTH) hub led by Principal Investigator Rajat Gupta, Professor of Sustainable Architecture and Climate Change at Oxford Brookes University.  The Hub will explore the human health impacts of the UK’s net zero targets in relation to extreme heat and examine how the transition to net zero emissions can benefit vulnerable populations by improving health outcomes, such as reducing heat-related illnesses and enhancing living conditions during extreme heat events. The research will assess these benefits in various settings including homes, care facilities, hospitals, and prisons, with the aim of developing practical solutions that enhance health outcomes while supporting climate goals. Professor Susan Michie will lead the behavioural science input, applying the scientific understanding of behaviour and behaviour change to developing and evaluating interventions to reduce indoor overheating of buildings that can be implemented at scale. The focus will be on vulnerable populations such as those living in care homes or prisons. This work will be informed by COM-B model of behaviour and the Behaviour Change Wheel framework. Outcomes will be assessed by residents’ and others’ behaviours in relation to indoor heat control as well as a number of indoor exposure estimates, greenhouse gas emissions, and costs. The team will also use the APEASE framework to measure outcomes such as acceptability, practicability, equity and spillover effects. 

Professor Susan Michie notes that "The climate crisis is generating a wide range of serious problems for humanity, even in resource-rich countries.  Addressing them requires understanding and enabling change in human behaviour within a wide system of groups of people, for example, policy makers, planners and architects and managers, as well as citizens. Drawing on the science of behaviour is likely to lead to more effective policies and interventions to prevent or reduce environmental crises as well as adapting to mitigate the harm they cause.  A wide range of disciplines need to collaborate in this work for significant advances to be made, from engineers to social scientists and modellers to climate scientists.  This talented collaboration has the potential to make an important contribution to the health of people in the context of extreme heat in vulnerable settings in the transition to Net Zero targets and climate adaptation.” 

The UK hub for one health systems: creating sustainable health and social care pathways

Dr Julze Alejandre, BR-UK Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, is a technical advisor on the UK Hub for One Health Systems: creating sustainable health and social care pathways that is led by Professor Ed Wilson at the University of Exeter. The focus of this Hub will be to develop new ways to help the NHS dramatically cut its carbon footprint. This new health and social care pathway Hub will bring together a range of university and health and social care partners throughout the UK, to tackle the challenge of helping the NHS become environmentally sustainable, and to help meet its legal obligation to become net zero by 2045. The Hub will work with patients to design-out carbon from care pathways. It will ensure a health service that not only provides the best possible care for patients today, but a healthy environment for the health of future generations tomorrow. Dr Alejandre will contribute his expertise in behavioural research and implementation science to help deliver one of the work programmes of the hub that focuses on reducing carbon emissions and other pollutants from the mental healthcare pathway.

Dr Alejandre shared "Having worked in this area in the past five years, the UK health sector has made significant progress to achieve its net zero goals with its recent commitment in the COP28 Health Declaration. However, we still need to understand if the environmentally sustainable solutions available to us are appropriate and acceptable for diverse groups in different contexts and are indeed effective in reducing the carbon and other pollutants emitted from different health and social care pathways. Using transdisciplinary expertise in health economics, environmental science, as well as behavioural and implementation sciences, the Hub for One Health Systems aims to fill this gap."

Read the full press releases 

• National Research Hub on Net Zero, Health and Extreme Heat
• UK Hub for One Health Systems: Creating Sustainable Health and Social Care Pathways