Context of the research Drug and/or alcohol misuse by a parent can be harmful to children and wider family members. Because of this, parents who misuse drugs or alcohol often receive health and social care services to help them reduce their misuse and to protect their children. Having another parent or carer who does not misuse drugs or alcohol can be protective for children. However, little is understood about how to best support these parents and carers who are often overlooked regarding support. Our project will work closely with these 'affected' parents/carers and their children as well as with health and social care professionals involved in their care to develop an intervention which specifically supports to the non-substance misusing parent/carer. Aims and objectives In our project we will: - Map what support is currently available for families affected by a parent's drug or alcohol misuse to find out what works well and what does not. We will do this by working in groups with different health and social care professionals across the North East of England. - We will also ask children who are affected by parental drug or alcohol misuse and their parents/carers who do not misuse drugs or alcohol who they think can provide them with the most useful support, including family members, friends and local volunteer groups. - We will ask the non drug or alcohol-misusing parents and carers how best to help them support children affected by parental alcohol or drug misuse. - We will combine what we learnt and share this with parents/carers and health and social care professionals in workshops. We will work in partnership to develop a new way of helping parents and carers in their caregiving role. This will be the 'Safe Space Intervention'. Potential application and benefits The Safe Space intervention will be delivered to parents/carers of children aged 0-17 years (inclusive) who live within families affected by parental drug or alcohol misuse. Whilst these families often have a range of health and social care needs, we think that families who receive 'early help' and children's social care services will be the most likely group to receive the intervention as there is greatest need in this population. The Safe Space intervention aims to benefit children (improving their emotional wellbeing); their caregivers (improving their emotional wellbeing, quality of life and awareness of parental drug or alcohol misuse); the family (family functioning) and the professionals that support them (reducing the need for health and social care services including safeguarding services and increased confidence when supporting families affected).

Graveyards and cemeteries, once extramural, are now at the heart of Britain's towns and cities, often frequented by dog walkers, joggers, and tour groups. They were once places for burial and mourning, but urban transformation over the past two centuries has led to the disappearance or repurposing of many graveyards. This has fractured long-standing social bonds and erased shared histories. We use Ballast Hills Burial Ground (BHBG) in Newcastle upon Tyne as our urban inheritance case study. This post-medieval, non-conformist burial ground near the city centre holds the remains of over 12,000 individuals, including many paupers and marginalised individuals. Despite its historical richness, BHBG largely has been erased over the past century, resulting in limited public awareness of it. Once a gated burial ground on Newcastle's outskirts, it now is a flattened, green space in the thriving Ouseburn Valley, known for its culture and creative communities. Most gravestones have been taken down, with only a few remain upright, a sombre testament to its past use. This project aims to revive BHBG within Newcastle's historical landscape, resurrecting its history and enabling future research and stewardship. Combining archival research, archaeology, and community engagement, we intend to integrate this historic place into Ouseburn's cultural heritage and British history. The revival of BHBG is especially relevant today, shedding light on marginalized communities and promoting equality, diversity, and inclusion, particularly for the long-forgotten non-conformists. Given its diverse history and uses as a shared green space, connecting evidence is critical for shaping the site's future along with involving academics, residents, and the descendants of the deceased. This research unites history, library and information studies, human geography, and archaeology with a focus on public engagement through three aims. Aim 1 - enhancing BHBG resource accessibility through a comprehensive audit, conversations with resource holders, a gravestone inscription inventory, and a resource plan to prioritising future actions. Aim 2 - collating stakeholder interests by creating a stakeholder map to identify, analyse, and prioritize stakeholders, leading to a community engagement plan with two participatory activities. Aim 3 - discovering BHBG's historical significance through a desk-based assessment, emphasizing its local, regional, and national importance during the post-medieval period, and developing a research framework tailored to BHBG, linked to related sites in the UK. Achieving these aims will pave the way for subsequent inquiries, sparking new research questions and, inevitability, the opportunity for additional funding. Our engagement strategy supports co-production and communicating findings through public talks, blogs, and other academic outputs, drawing inspiration from Crossbones graveyard in London, a site that has attracted religious, feminist, radical, and artistic interventions. We aim to demonstrate proof of concept that harnesses BHBG communities to safeguarding the shared ancestry of marginalized individuals, families, and those seeking religious freedom. The benefits of this project are manifold, including the creation of an open-access integrated resource that will facilitate in-depth academic and genealogical research on buried individuals, non-conformist practices, social history, and the experiences of marginalized groups in the North East.

THE PROBLEM Public health prevention today faces a serious challenge: new research suggests that breathing high levels of air pollutants at critical points in our lives, particularly in early life, can lead to significant cognitive disorders, including dementia. This causal link, however, from a public health standpoint, is not the primary challenge. Instead, the challenge is in figuring out how best to prevent it. What new research tentatively suggests, and here is the real public health challenge, is that the factors that account for which populations are most likely to develop air-pollution-based cognitive disorders has less to do with 'how' they live and more to do with 'where' they live. In other words, it appears that, from a prevention standpoint, the complex social and environmental systems in which certain populations live makes air pollution a health vulnerability for them. Air pollution is a form of cognitive health inequality. What is not clear, however, is specifically 'how' these complex systems make air pollution a cognitive health vulnerability? From policies for traffic management and urban congestion to the un-equitable sharing of benefits derived from clean air strategies, we do not entirely understand the pathways by which the social and environmental determinants of air pollution lead to cognitive disorders. In turn, therefore, we do not entirely know how to effectively intervene into these complex systems. In other words, from a primary prevention standpoint it is not clear which air policies or interventions best mitigate against the negative impact these determinants have on cognitive health, particularly for the most socioeconomically vulnerable populations in the UK's major conurbations. Hence the purpose of InSPIRE. OUR COMPLEXITY APPROACH InSPIRE will develop innovative primary prevention strategies for improving air quality, so that where one lives in the UK is no longer a cognitive health vulnerability. InSPIRE (which is comprised of 22 academics working across 9 universities with a network of partnerships) will engage in a highly ambitious research programme using the latest developments in systems science methods for public health to do the following: 1.Develop a cutting-edge UK air pollution model (1970-2020) of what is known as PM2.5. These air pollutants are hazardous because they enter the bloodstream and travel to the brain to cause cognitive impairment. 2.Work with the Dementias Platform to link our air pollution model to the cognitive health outcomes of three different highly regard UK cohorts. 3.Work with regional and national partners to evaluate previous and current clean air strategies (1970 - 2020) to identify the most successful (for our cohorts) at mitigating the negative impact place has on cognitive health. 4.Create a catalogue of these policy strategies and evaluate them further for 4 conurbations: London, Birmingham, Tyne-Wear and greater Manchester. 5.Use these results to produce high quality policy information and strategies to inform end-users on preventing air-pollution-based cognitive disorders and health inequalities. OUR TOOLKIT/SIMULATION PLATFORM InSPIRE will also launch an online evaluation toolkit and scenario simulation platform similar to the UK Multiple Deprivation Index and 2050 DECC Energy Calculator. With impact at the forefront of our partnership with the public and stakeholders, our simulation platform and toolkit will be immediately fit for purpose. Additionally, central and local end-users will be able to fine tune their platform as the world changes around them. Linking with national or local data and regional services, they will also be empowered to determine what will work and what is cost effective in the short and long term. Together, InSPIRE will help mitigate the effect of air pollution on cognitive health, both opening prospects and closing pathways to this cognitive barrier for the good of our population.

COVID-19 has transformed city life: we now urgently need to develop imaginative ideas and creative practices to understand and address its impact on how we live and work in cities. Performance theory and practice offer innovative, proven, yet under-explored means to achieve this. This project will provide new models for understanding and practising city life, helping people cope with social distancing, both practically and emotionally. Working with strategic decision-makers in Bristol, Glasgow and Newcastle City Councils (confirmed), we will investigate everyday innovations (social performances) and artistic interventions (aesthetic performances), to understand how performance can reimagine and facilitate city life in times of social distancing, and how performance theory and analysis might contribute to more nuanced, creative and sustainable strategies and practices for response and recovery across five urgent areas: social cohesion, new behaviours, community resilience, perceptions of environment, and crisis management. Working with artists, arts venues and officers from hazard mitigation, sustainability and resilience, the project will lead to new understandings of the place and function of performance, broker creative thinking on response and recovery, and make strategic recommendations for arts strategy, pandemic planning and hazard mitigation policy. Impacts will be scaled, primarily, through Core Cities, a network of eleven UK cities, and arts strategy organisations. This project builds on the investigators' recent work in New Orleans, which led the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness to fundamentally change their hazard mitigation policy and practice, and to significant changes in strategies for major arts organisations (www.performingcityresilience.com)

Food provided in schools has a major influence on the quality of children's diets and has the potential to reduce inequalities in dietary intake between children according to their social or economic background. The quality of diet in childhood has been shown to impact on future development, educational achievement, health and well-being outcomes, and also influences diet in adulthood, as well as disease risk (e.g. diabetes, heart disease) in later life. There are differences in how schools arrange their food provision and what they serve, between schools and between countries in the UK, and this is not well understood. We propose a UK school food network (GENIUS), considering the food system across the preschool, primary and secondary schools, and including all school food provision, both within and outside the canteen. The aim of this network will be to work towards a more health-promoting food and nutrition system in UK schools. Objectives include the development of a network of academics and non-academics across the UK actively researching and influencing school food, the use of a range of novel research methods to understand the current UK school food system, and appreciate its complexities, and examination of similarities and differences and areas of best practice between the four nations of the UK. Finally, the network will explore opportunities for interventions that will positively impact on school food, improve the diet quality of children at school and reduce inequalities. The network will bring together researchers from a range of backgrounds including nutrition, epidemiology, public health, sensory science, health economics, health informatics, health psychology, education, planning and policy. Inclusion of project partners who are actively involved in the provision of school food from across the UK, including from local government, catering providers, pupils and parents, will make sure the work of the network is immediately useful and, together, this team of academics and non-academics will ensure the-development of research priorities and questions that are relevant in the school setting. This network will use a combination of workshops, working groups and funding of small projects to map the school food system and work together to develop research questions. Understanding the current food system and building this network of those interested in and working in school food will advance research and policy around the food environment in schools. Findings will be presented widely in both the academic and non-academic setting to make sure the findings have an impact. Funding applications will be developed based on the initial co-production of research questions and priority areas during network activities, working in partnership with policy makers and schools, and will sustain the network in the longer term.