IOE Health of the Public

We improve the health of the public through research on mental health, social care, health promotion, early intervention, health inequalities, and health communication.

About us

IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society helps improve the health of the public through its multi-disciplinary research on physical and mental health, the prevention of ill-health and promotion of wellbeing, and the reduction of health disparities. This includes studies on the wider determinants of health, health behaviours and lifestyles, and health care delivery. We are a major partner of UCL Health of the Public and work closely with a range of external partners and stakeholders.

Between 2017 and 2021, IOE secured £60m in funding from the NIHR, MRC, ESRC and other major funders to undertake this research.

We are an international beacon of excellence in engagement with children and families and local, minoritised, vulnerable and underserved communities.

Our health research is informed by social and behavioural sciences as well as the arts and humanities, and draws on a broad range of methods, including cohort studies, case study research, discourse analysis, RCT, process evaluation, and evidence synthesis.

Research themes

Mental health, wellbeing and education

Children and young people

• Parenting and children's behavioural problems: Micro- and macro-processes at play in the context of intervention
• Improving young people’s mental health
• Etch-a-Sketch Online: Scoping clinical use for adolescents with mental health difficulties

Within schools and further education

• Supporting wellbeing, emotional resilience and learning
• Influencing government policy to improve working life for teachers
• How educators and mental health practitioners can work together: implementing Mental Health Support Teams in Further Education Institutions
• Urban Forest Schools: Designing-in play to urban environments for health and wellbeing

Autism

• Securing investment in autistic people’s mental health
• Autistic people’s mental health suffering during lockdown

Adulthood

• Psychological distress from early adulthood to early old age: evidence from the 1946, 1958 and 1970 British birth cohorts (Cambridge University Press, 2021) 
• Sleep and prostate cancer: what is the link and the effect of treatment?
• COVID-19: Global social trust and mental health
• COVID-19: Trainee TEACHers’ challenges and barriers to mental health and WELLbeing support (TEACHWELL)

Wellbeing of children and families

• Families and food in hard times: European comparative research
• Action Against Stunting Hub: Early Childhood - Education and Cognition workstream
• Patterns of help and care by adult only children and children with siblings

Health promotion and early intervention

• NIHR Children and Families Policy Research Unit
• Children, young people and families: Care, education, health and wellbeing
• Children's consumption of energy drinks: a systematic review to inform policy
• Boosting children’s health: the role of inflammation, poverty and children's working memory
• Schools as enabling spaces to improve learning and health-related quality of life for primary school children in rural communities in South Africa
• Prevalence and early-life determinants of midlife multimorbidity

Creative arts and health

• Eco-Capabilities: Supporting children’s wellbeing through participatory art in nature
• Branching Out: Tackling mental health inequalities in schools with Community Artscapers
• Flock project: ceramic birds helping tell stories of loss, exile, migration and hope
• Beatboxing after laryngectomy, with Shout at Cancer

Health inequalities and determinants of health

• Where external representations meet embodied experiences: diverse voices in research and practice
• Socioeconomic inequalities across life and premature mortality from 1971 to 2016
• Prevalence and early-life determinants of midlife multimorbidity
• Harnessing evidence to tackle health issues
• Researching the causes of eating disorders: the case of decision-making skills

Health communication

• Teamwork in healthcare: A close-up view of the frontline
• 'War' as metaphor in the fight against cancer / The language of healthcare
• Consent and shared decision-making in healthcare
• Applying Linguistics in Illness and Healthcare Contexts (Bloomsbury, 2020)
• UCL Health Communications Network
• International Consortium for Communication in Health Care (IC4CH)
• Project: Collaboration for change: Promoting vaccine uptake
• Project: Questioning Vaccination Discourse ('Quo VaDis’)

Improving health policy

• Improving global public policy decision-making with optimised systematic reviews
• Putting social and emotional skills at the heart of education policy
• NIHR Policy Research Programme Reviews Facility
• NICE Research Support Unit
• Social Care

Covid-19

• Rapid evidence reviews on the impact of closures and disruptions to schools, colleges and universities to inform UK government policy
• Mapping evidence to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic
• The Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on mental health
• Project: COVID-19: Global social trust and mental health
• Families in Tower Hamlets: impacts of COVID-19
• More Covid-19 research at IOE
   

Meet the team

Professor Jeff Bezemer, Vice Dean Health