Using health evidence to influence healthier urban development: a qualitative evaluation of a researcher–practitioner collaboration

Despite evidence showing health impacts associated with environmental features such as housing, air quality, transport and greenspaces, urban development decisions often result in less healthy environments. To address research-practice gaps we explore a collaboration involving an embedded researcher who bridged between urban development practitioners and researchers on a UK local government-led regeneration project. This facilitated development and implementation of a new health economic model that demonstrated the health impacts of changes to the built environment. We shared evidence at multiple timepoints to influence decision-making for a regeneration framework. Evaluation of this approach involved analysis of semi-structured interviews with key practitioners, alongside project meeting notes and embedded researcher field notes. We found that the academic-practitioner partnership, enabled by the embedded researcher, helped academics understand a complex system and provided contextually relevant evidence for practitioners to: highlight problems; support good/aspirational solutions; and consider trade-offs. Academic-practitioner collaborations can help develop and implement impactful interventions to tackle important, and complex, health challenges associated with the built environment. Understanding how evidence may be useful for different purposes can help to implement its use more effectively, and translate it for different audiences.