How to Live Well – a new health and wellbeing research project in Oxford

Living Well Oxford is a collaborative public engagement project between Science Oxford, the Oxford AHSN and the Oxford Health Experiences Institute to support the exploration and understanding of health and healthcare.

Sustainable healthcare in the 21st Century requires the spread of innovation: finding new and better ways of doing things and doing things that we know to work. This means not only new drugs, devices and diagnostics, but also new ways of involving the public: learning from them and helping them understand health and illness, manage their own health and access care when they need it.

As the number of patients with multiple, long-term conditions increases so does the need to improve knowledge and behaviours in the population and to transform the nature of their interaction with the clinicians and the systems caring for them. We need innovation in education for doctors and nurses. We need innovation in the way in which we design health and social care systems. We need truly personalised care and person-centred organisations.

The Living Well Project’s Programme Manager Kate Castleden is co-ordinating a pilot to develop and evaluate activities and events which will build expertise and evidence for a longer term larger-scale project. We will focus this work initially in Oxford and explore what the concept of “living well” means, drawing on areas that have significant public health impact, public interest and local research expertise, such as weight, diet and health, and ageing and dementia. Initial activities will include:

• setting up an advisory group
• fundraising to support events and activities
• events as part of Oxfordshire Science Festival in June 2016, including a health storytelling event at the Story Museum
• working with seldom-heard communities to inform activity development
• working with researchers to provide opportunities for public engagement and build capacity

To find out more contact [email protected]