Evidence Islington

Evidence Islington is a partnership between London Borough of Islington, universities, and voluntary and community sector organisations. It is funded by The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

The partnership works to improve how we collect, join up, and use information with the aim to reduce health inequalities in the borough.

Collecting and using evidence better can improve our services. This includes things that affect residents’ health and wellbeing such as housing, employment, and the environment.

Islington awarded five-year Health Determinants Research Collaboration

We are thrilled to announce that after a successful pilot year, we were awarded full Health Determinants Research Collaboration (HDRC) status in October 2023. This is a really exciting development and has been possible thanks to close collaborative working with our resident co-design group, Healthwatch Islington and the Diverse Communities Health Voice (DCHV) Network, and our academic partners London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University College London (UCL) and NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North Thames.

Funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to boost the local authority’s capacity and capability to conduct high-quality research, the HDRC partnership – known as Evidence Islington – will enable the local authority to become more research-active, so we can collect and use evidence better to improve our services and reduce health inequalities.

Islington’s five-year programme will focus on core issues that affect residents’ health and wellbeing, such as housing, employment, and the environment. These align to the missions in the council’s 2030 strategy. We will take this work forward through three workstreams:

• Creating a sustainable research culture that places evidence at the heart of how we work with communities.
• Strengthening and, maturing our data infrastructure to enable us to generate high quality insights and evaluate impact.
• Building capacity and participation in research with our residents and voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations to drive change and make a positive difference, ensuring they are central to the design and delivery of the programme.  

We made strong progress through our one-year pilot. We look forward to taking this work much further through the full programme, working with colleagues across the council and in the community, supported by academic and other partners. Involvement of residents and VCS will be guided by this strategy, developed by our resident co-design group and contributions from DCHV members.

Keep an eye on this web page for details on how you can be involved.

In the meantime, if you have questions or ideas about Evidence Islington, we’d love to hear from you. Email EI@islington.gov.uk.