EPSRC Our Health
Video: Our health
our health introduction video

Our Health

Our Health projects create community-based research that invites local communities to set real-world research questions and agendas around health and wellbeing. The programme is based on the ‘science shops’ model that is used widely across Europe to try to bridge research institutes and wider society.

Video: Cheyne gang 2
Cheyne gang video

Cheyne Gang

The Cheyne Gang are a community singing group who have partnered with Our Health to create exciting community-led research. They have written and recorded this song to express how they have been feeling during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our Health students who have been supporting the Gang during the pandemic also appear in the video!

Frances and Helen Szoor-McElhinney

Dr Helen Szoor-McElhinney created and leads The EPSRC Our Health Interdisciplinary Community-University Research Programme.

Our Health logo, EPSRC logo, Univerisity of Edinburgh logo, NHS logo

In the summer of 2018, Our Health launched two interdisciplinary, community-based research pilot projects. The research questions had been proposed by local patient support groups.

Our Health has partnered with the Cowrie Scholarship Foundation and the charity Versus Arthritis to offer British Black students enriched learning opportunities, in collaboration with the EPSRC InLightenUs project.

students

Students are invited to select one of the following projects and form small interdisciplinary teams that will research the questions that have been posed by our community partners.

students chat around table

Community-based research provides opportunities for the wider public to generate research ideas, questions and agendas.

student reflecting on the our health project work

Students have told us that the Our Health projects allow them to develop skills and attributes beyond those acquired through their current programme of study.

our health community members group photo

The relationships we create and build with our community partners form the essential foundations of the Our Health research projects. Our community partners direct and drive our research forward.

3 people chat

The Our Health team encourages students from any discipline and any programme of study to apply if they are interested in community engaged research and enriched learning experiences.