We are applying for Theme 3, focussing on the skills, career development and training needs of data professionals who support data delivery within Trusted Research Environments (TREs). Our network of regional TREs in Scotland serve as vital hubs for health and social care data research using deidentified, unconsented data to improve public health outcomes. The Safe Haven Network functions under the Scottish Safe Haven Charter since 2014 and has dedicated data professionals who identify, curate, link and deliver deidentified data to researchers. This includes critical information governance work supporting the 'Five Safes' framework for secure access and release of outputs through disclosure checking. Currently, opportunities to enhance projects with a social science lens are being missed, and social science researchers may be frustrated in their attempts to integrate important datasets with health and social care data. By investing in the development of TRE staff in utilising social science data, we aim to address challenges and bridge existing skill gaps. We want health-focussed TRE networks to feel more open to social science researchers, to maximise innovative research in the public good. Our project will design and implement a tailored training program to equip data professional staff with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively harness the potential of social science data. Improved accessibility and diversity of data research in TREs will foster more inclusive and interdisciplinary research. This work could support the roll out of training for the related new network of research Secure Data Environments (SDEs) in England. Our project will be delivered in 4 work packages: 1. Identifying training needs: We will conduct stakeholder engagement, including data service professional staff, social science data controllers and researchers, to gain a thorough understanding of their challenges and training requirements. Through surveys and workshops, we will develop a gap and needs report to inform workforce development. Additionally, we will review job descriptions, onboarding or induction materials, and past projects to identify areas for improvement. 2. Curriculum development: Building on this gap and needs analysis, we will develop a comprehensive training curriculum. We will use our established learning design workshop methodology to collaboratively produce a tiered curriculum in partnership with experts. This will provide foundation level training introducing fundamental concepts for all, building to intermediate and advanced levels for individuals with deeper interest in supporting social science research. 3. Training content creation and evaluation: we will create engaging and informative training materials mapped to the curriculum. Leveraging our advanced online education and learning design expertise, we will develop online modules, interactive exercises, and integrated case studies using social science datasets produced in partnership with our TRE network. Throughout the development process, we will evaluate the effectiveness of content through learning analytics and iteratively improve content with continuous user feedback and testing across our TRE network. 4. Future strategy and sustainability: As we near the completion of the project, we will submit the training content to be approved as credit bearing modules aligned with the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) and explore options to ensure training content is accredited or recognised by relevant Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies (PSRBs). We will engage further with key stakeholders to garner support for a newly designed career pathway to allow selected TRE data professionals to develop social science expertise, mapped to our curriculum and training material.

Inequality is a growing problem in the United Kingdom (UK) with austerity measures continuing to hit the poorest hardest. The pandemic shone a light on rising inequality in the UK. It also brought about large-scale cross-sectoral working to respond to the pandemic in a way that was previously almost unimaginable. Now, as the country experiences a cost-of-living crisis, the scale of inequalities is predicted to worsen. This is especially true for people already disadvantaged by poverty, or disability, or for Black and minority ethnic communities and migrants. Like other post-industrial cities and regions across the UK, Glasgow continues to be affected by persistent deprivation, income and education inequity, poor health, and declining natural environments. For decades, researchers from a broad range of disciplines have been measuring and describing inequalities to help policymakers find answers. But often the problems needing to be addressed are driven by a complex interaction of factors, including a lack of affordable housing, insecure and poorly paid work, inadequate access to social support, and needing solutions which transcend the sectorised nature of policymaking. The challenge here is to create a new innovative policy partnership with the experience and foresight to design policies that mutually benefit multiple sectors and support shared goals. Our aim in Phase 1 is to bring together an exciting new partnership in the Glasgow City Region, the Glasgow City Region Future Look Network. This Network will work together in finding solutions that will lead to an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable future that satisfies the needs of various parts of the policymaking system, whilst working towards inclusive and equitable goals aligned with community priorities. To achieve our aim, we will bring together stakeholders from policy, practice, research, private sector, and the community within the Glasgow City Region through a series of meetings and workshops focused on the following three priority areas: 1. Productivity, employment, and skills 2. Health and social deprivation 3. Empowering communities We will host three stakeholder dialogues, one focussed on each priority area, which will each include a core workshop. These dialogues will aim to understand different stakeholders' aspirations for the future and share thinking on ways to overcome current challenges in aligning policies to achieve this future vision. Information from the three dialogues will then be brought together to create a policy system map that explores the interrelationships between the three priority areas. We will also review existing data providers and datasets, local evidence, and tools, to see how this might contribute to new thinking on developing solutions to the identified challenges, and where additional new evidence is needed. In order to drive forward change within the priority areas, we will host a roundtable event with senior leaders in policy, academia, and practice to review the project findings and identify innovative and actionable solutions to take forward. This will form the basis of our Phase 2 proposal. This network and associated activities will help secure buy-in from partners and senior leaders across the Glasgow City Region to support this future work.

HealthMod is a large research programme that brings together scientists, policymakers, and charities interested in using economic policies to improve people's health. We particularly want to improve the health of people who experience disadvantage or discrimination in their lives, as they tend to spend much more of their lives in poor health and also die younger, and the situation has got worse over the past decade. Local and national governments make decisions on various economic policies, such as changes to taxes, welfare, job creation, and social housing. These policies have long-term effects on people's health, as they influence important aspects of healthy living, like having enough money, good work, decent housing, safe neighbourhoods, and supportive communities. In HealthMod, we want to help policymakers, charity organisations and communities themselves understand how these policies affect people differently, based on characteristics like gender, income, and where they live. Our research would show whether planned new policies are likely to support long and healthy lives for everyone, or whether they would make inequalities worse. Our programme has three work areas: Computer modelling for Health: We will develop computer models to show how different kinds of policies might affect the economic situation and long-term health of each person in Britain. These models help policymakers understand the impact of policies on people in their area, especially whether they narrow or widen unfair health inequalities, so they can make informed decisions. All models we develop will be freely available for researchers and policymakers to use. Policy and Advocacy Engagement: Government organisations and charities seeking to promote healthier policy decisions are partners in our programme. Together we will decide on the most urgent questions that our modelling can help answer. This will ensure that the models we build can inform real decisions. We will create websites, videos, and training courses to explain how our models work and how to use them effectively. Citizen's Engagement and Democratisation of Modelling: We believe it is vital to involve people who may be affected by economic policies. We will host workshops where individuals experiencing issues such as poverty or poor health can share their thoughts and experiences. These insights will shape our models, making them more relevant and inclusive. We will also work with a broader group of citizens to understand which policy outcomes are most important for society. Our goal is to create high-quality, trustworthy computer models that incorporate policymaker and community perspectives. This research will guide the best way to design, explain and use computer modelling for policy decisions that seek to improve health and reduce health inequalities.

People experience stigma (linked to negative attitudes, beliefs, and experiences because of a perceived difference) due to certain individual characteristics such as age, disability, or where they live. Older disabled people are more likely to live in poorer areas that carry a certain stigma, in homes not fit for purpose, with increased challenges in accessing support services. Little is known about how experiences of several stigmas converge and impact upon the way that people are integrated and feel included in their communities and societies. The negative impact of stigma must be examined as it has a detrimental effect on inclusion, creating barriers to accessing services and places. Stigma is also a process that can make certain people less powerful in getting the help needed; this is particularly compounded for disabled people. This project will examine inequalities and stigma through the experiences of older disabled adults and explore interventions such as home and environmental modifications that encourage inclusive approaches that support people to age well within homes and communities. The project will focus on older disabled adults (65+) with mobility and sensory impairments but also capture different experiences as everyone is a stakeholder in ageing: Inclusive ageing is not just a 'problem' for or about older people. Furthermore, this project is not just about disabled people. Through engaging with disabled researchers and having representation of disabled people in the academic team and advisory panel it will ensure our research is conducted with disabled people at its heart. The project will create a new community peer-researcher group of older disabled adults. This group will be trained to carry out research in their communities, such as observation, analysing videos and photographs and keeping reflective diaries. By participants also being researchers, this will increase capacity for disabled people to be integrated into evidence-based solutions. The research project utilises data that already exists and the collection of new data relating to people's experiences. We will utilise information that has already been gathered in large statistical datasets but re-examine it to understand where different points of identity, including disability, income, age and neighbourhood inequalities, cross and intersect. The project will also create a new set of sources that will capture a nuanced and detailed account of people's lives using deliberative diaries that give insight to the real-life experiences of people to help understand and tackle barriers to inclusion. This will be done by using a new concept and toolkit called Inclusive Living, which was co-created with housing organisations. However, the existing toolkit is not fully representative of society, and this project will review and modify it to ensure the experiences of disabled people are integrated. Using the information gathered about people's lived experiences, the project will work with organisations using the newly developed toolkit to make positive changes to increase accessibility for disabled adults with mobility and sensory impairments. This will focus on home and environment modifications, often termed adaptations, and involve confirmed key partners that include housing associations, housing developers, third sector and health and social care organisations. The project has confirmed partnerships with key housing providers to begin this activity, looking to form an Inclusive Living Alliance. The project will further create resources that will help organisations facilitate change to address barriers that disabled adults have experienced and shared within the project. We will create accessible videos and audio podcasts of lived experiences of stigma to bring the stories shared to life. These resources will then be used to make key policy and practice recommendations aiming to improve inclusivity for disabled people.

Data and data science are transforming the world and data science expertise is in extremely high demand. Particularly within biomedical research, there is an urgent need for a shared framework of data functions, to enable skills mobility and recognition across different contexts (MRC strategic review 2022). This project will enable organisations to incorporate data science skills into their teams and work culture by establishing a greater understanding of the common language needed to describe skills and careers in biomedical data science. We will enable cross-domain working so that collaborative team science approaches lead the future of biomedical research. Our proposal to advance biomedical data science careers will focus on three key objectives: To evaluate skills gaps and identify priority areas for developing knowledge, skills and behaviours across the biomedical data science ecosystem. 2. To better understand roles, career pathways and team science approaches within the biomedical data science community and how these can improve access, resourcing and career offers. 3. To evaluate and recommend innovative approaches and ways of working that will drive forward capacity building and improve quality and standards in biomedical data science. We will conduct an extensive landscape mapping exercise to evaluate the biomedical data science ecosystem in terms of competencies, skills, career pathways and team science approaches. This will constitute a comprehensive basis to improve the development of biomedical data science skills and career offers and, ultimately, support innovation to improve capacity, quality and standards in biomedical data science. The Alan Turing Institute and EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) are world leaders in biomedical data science with proven track records of innovative and impactful collaborative team science, and we will leverage existing cross-sector networks and interest groups to provide a wide range of partners to inform this work. The outcomes of this work have the potential to directly affect how biomedical data science is conducted as well as improve the research culture and career opportunities for biomedical data science across the UK. This improvement will positively impact sector porosity, supporting greater mobility between organisations in different sectors, increasing the overall workforce, and leading to greater efficiency in research. In addition, our approach will embed and champion equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) by ensuring we conduct the project in a manner that enables diverse and inclusive input from the biomedical data science community and beyond. This will lead to more impactful outputs that will provide transparency of roles, career paths and ways of working, which will allow for democratisation of knowledge in terms of careers in biomedical data science and will create opportunities for a greater variety of people, skills and roles in teams leading to truly diverse teams.