Reflections on our SIPHER Consortium journey
Now that SIPHER has come to a close after over five years of research, collaboration, and innovation, I’d like to take this moment to reflect on the journey that brought us here. I will be forever grateful for the support of the UK Prevention Research Partnership. It allowed me to evolve what began as a spark of an idea - ignited through a casual conversation in a playground - into an exciting and productive initiative addressing health inequalities through systems science and interdisciplinary partnerships.
From the outset, we recognised that to truly make headway in tackling health inequalities, we needed healthy public policy in all policy sectors, well beyond the remit of what our public health colleagues could directly influence.
But how can you integrate health equity considerations into policies where health is not a primary focus, and create buy-in?
My vision for SIPHER was to develop a blueprint for a whole-system approach to public health, bringing together qualitative and quantitative methods and tools to support policy design across sectors. I gathered around me leading researchers from seven universities, and supported by topic and science advisory groups, policymakers at all levels of government, our community panels, we created a collaborative pipeline connecting in-depth system understanding, methods development, data-driven insights and policy design priorities. Through a powerful combination of qualitative systems methods, evidence synthesis, data science, and computational modelling, we tackled evidence gaps around pressing health challenges including poverty, precarious work, poor housing, and declining societal mental health.
Our final Showcase event confirmed the value of our work and its potential for long-term impact. Participants explored our tools and methods, shared firsthand how SIPHER products could be applied in diverse policy contexts, and were keen to engage in thoughful discussions.
It was also a wonderful opportunity to celebrate with our researchers, PhD students, policy partners, stakeholders, and all who engaged with us. I believe SIPHER has laid a strong foundation for system change, building understanding, capacity, and tools for applied systems science, and I am looking forward to seeing its full impact unfold in the years ahead.
Professor Petra Meier, SIPHER Director
The grant-funded period for SIPHER has now concluded. As a result, we are unable to accommodate requests for joint work or collaboration within the previously funded envelope. However, as researchers we remain enthusiastic about exploring new collaborations and joint activities and are also happy to offer advice and share insights based on the experience we have gained during our research.
Enquiries to sipher@glasgow.ac.uk will be redirected to the most relevant SIPHER team member to provide a response.
Our website www.sipher.ac.uk offering access to all resources will be maintained and updated until March 2026.