Dr Steve Cummins has been awarded a major grant from the Department of Health’s Policy Research Programme.
The grant funding totals £922,760 for a major project evaluating the ‘Healthy Towns’ programme, a set of environmental interventions in nine towns across England aimed at reducing obesity through improving diet and increasing physical activity.
The project is in collaboration with four colleagues from Cambridge, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, University of East Anglia & Newcastle. The project will employ three staff for 3.5 years (1 x Senior Research Fellow; 1 x Research Fellow; 1 x Project Support Assistant) all of whom will be based in the Department at Queen Mary. These posts will be advertised shortly.
The project is likely to be high profile and will probably require lots of contact with the Department of Health up to ministerial level throughout its life.