Research unit to help encourage healthier habits launched

The Behaviour and Health Research Unit (BHRU) at the University's Institute of Public Health was officially launched yesterday, 11 April.

The aim of the BHRU is to contribute evidence to national and international efforts to help people achieve sustained changes in behaviour that lead to better health outcomes in all social groups.  The new unit will also help inform the Government’s policy making on behaviour and health by investigating the best ways to assist people to change poor health habits for the better.

Poor diet, lack of physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption are together responsible for the huge burden of chronic disease worldwide. They also contribute to the differences in life expectancy between the poorest and the richest in the UK and elsewhere. But while most people value their health, many persist in behaviour that undermines it.

The new unit will contribute evidence to help to meet the public health challenge by initially focusing on diet, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption and looking in particular at our environments - where we live and work - to see what can be changed to prompt people to behave in ways that improve their health for the long term.

Professor Theresa Marteau, Director of the Policy Research Unit on behaviour and health at the University of Cambridge says:  "Achieving sustained behaviour change that leads to improved health outcomes and reduces inequalities is a key public health challenge.

"The new unit brings together a group of excellent researchers to find the methods that are most effective and present best value for money in changing people's behaviour to improve the health of our population. This will help ensure that Government policy decisions can be informed by robust evidence and offer the best value for money."

As part of the unit’s mission to help inform how best to change behaviour, the BHRU recently published a paper on ‘nudging’ (which involves altering environments to prompt healthier behaviour without financial incentives or bans).  The research, spearheaded by Professor Marteau, found that ‘at present, the evidence to support the view that nudging alone can improve population health is weak’.  The paper also points out that nudging has the potential to generate harms as well as benefits, particularly if an emphasis on nudging results in a neglect of other, potentially more effective interventions.

The BHRU is made up of a team of experts from the University of Cambridge, MRC Human Nutrition Research, MRC Epidemiology Unit, RAND Europe and the University of East Anglia.