The UK-wide hub, to be named Behavioural Research UK (BR-UK), aims to build national capacity to provide research and evidence to help government, charities and other organisations better respond to a range of social problems, from pandemic planning to the climate crisis to making communities more resilient.

The NI aspect will focus on health and wellbeing and will be led by Dr Laura McGowan, from the Centre for Public Health at Queen’s, in partnership with the Health and Social Care R&D Division of the Public Health Agency (HSC R&D Division, HSCNI).

Behavioural research is the science of understanding how humans behave as groups and how this shapes our societies and how we govern them. It’s seen by behavioural scientists as fundamental to improving society’s response to problems, by better understanding the motivations behind – and barriers to – the actions people take.

The five-year funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is intended to support the development of a joined-up, behavioural research community across the UK, drive interdisciplinary innovation and the translation of research into policy and other, tangible outcomes.

Dr Laura McGowan from Queen’s said: “The Covid pandemic really proved the importance of behavioural research in understanding the way we behaved – for example, our willingness to wear masks, have a vaccine, get tested. These are all behaviours and understanding them can influence policy and vice-versa.

“We need to apply those learnings to many more aspects of life in order to build an evidence base that helps support and shape policy in some of the most challenging areas of behaviour, whether that’s health and wellbeing, climate change, communities and justice, and more.

“For example, much of my academic research to date has been around obesity and more recently on reproductive women’s health, including the importance of taking folic acid before pregnancy occurs – these are areas of real behavioural importance. The challenge is always understanding, how can we have a positive impact on the behaviour of people in order to drive better public-health outcomes?”

Dr Nicola Armstrong, Programme Manager of the HSC R&D Division, HSCNI welcomed news of the hub, saying: “As the Chair of the Covid-19 Behaviour Change Group, one of the Public Health Agency’s Pandemic Response Silver Cells, I saw first-hand the importance of behavioural science in managing what was one of the most challenging, communicable-disease outbreaks that the HSC and society as whole had faced in recent times.

“HSC R&D Division is a partner in this work and will be providing financial support to strengthen the NI component of the award to bring added value to the local research community and ensure that NI makes a significant contribution to this endeavour.

“I look forward to working with the BR-UK team and our Queen’s University colleague, Dr Laura McGowan, in taking the field of behaviour science forward and supporting the translation of research findings into policy and practice.”

At a national level, the hub will be co-led by Professor Linda Bauld, Bruce and John Usher Chair of Public Health at The University of Edinburgh’s Usher Institute and Chief Social Policy Advisor to the Scottish Government and Professor Susan Michie, Professor of Health Psychology and Director of the Centre for Behavioural Change at University College London. Leading academics across a range of disciplines from Queen’s and seven other universities – Edinburgh, UCL, Cardiff, Manchester, Oxford, Sheffield and St Andrews – will join forces with partners from government, industry and the charity sector.

The award is part of a larger £17M investment in behavioural research from ESRC which will include development and training opportunities for academics and practitioners from a wide range of sectors.

Professor Linda Bauld welcomed this investment: “BR-UK builds on decades of research to understand human behaviour. Covid-19 has reminded us, even more than before, that behaviour is shaped by context. Unless we understand how society is changing in the UK and how people respond to these changes, then governments, businesses and organisations will struggle to adapt.

“Our partnership of academics, policy makers, commercial and voluntary sector organisations across all four nations will work together to accelerate the use of evidence to help address challenges facing us now and in the future.”

Work in NI will begin with a scoping exercise to determine priority challenges for behavioural research which can be addressed in future behavioural research projects.

Dr Laura McGowan

Centre for Public Health; School of Medicine, Dentistry and Bioscience

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Inquiries to Una Bradley on u.bradley@qub.ac.uk