Mechanisms for population strategies to prevent diet- and activity-related chronic disease
A population approach to disease prevention aims to shift the distributions of risk factors such as diet, physical activity and adiposity by changing the wider environments that influence everyone’s behaviour. This complements ‘high risk’ approaches targeting people at elevated risk of disease which have limited reach, may be costly and have the potential to exacerbate health inequalities.
The UK has made some progress in implementing population disease prevention strategies, but their impact has been modest and their evaluation is challenging. We lack a generalisable understanding of what makes for a successful strategy in different contexts. Just as high-risk approaches have benefitted from greater focus on behaviour-change theory, more effective and equitable deployment of population strategies depends on better understanding of how interventions work or do not work, and the extent to which findings are transferable between populations and contexts.
Evidence for population disease prevention strategies is often difficult or impossible to generate using randomised controlled trials, so we propose a more comprehensive approach. Building on the MRC translational framework for public health research, the goals of this programme are:
To develop and apply novel observational, natural experimental and evidence synthesis methods in combination
To produce new and stronger evidence for mechanistic pathways by which interventions that change environments lead to changes in (a) dietary and physical activity behaviours, (b) energy intake, energy expenditure, adiposity and other metabolic intermediaries, and (c) changes in NCD incidence and mortality
To identify key underlying intervention functions that can be implemented in different contexts
To specify more generalisable principles for the next generation of population disease prevention strategies in the UK and around the world.
We aim to triangulate a broad range of evidence ‘from epidemiology to evaluation’ to reduce critical uncertainties in causal mechanistic pathways for population disease prevention. Novel mechanism-focused systematic reviews of potential intervention strategies will form the pivot of the research programme (work package 1), both drawing on and feeding into mechanism-focused analyses of existing observational (WP2) and intervention study datasets (WP3).
David Ogilvie – University of Cambridge (Project Lead)
Jean Adams – University of Cambridge
Miriam Alvarado – University of Cambridge
Tom Burgoine – University of Cambridge
Leandro Garcia – Queen’s University Belfast
Louise Foley – University of Cambridge
David Humphreys – University of Oxford
Jenna Panter – University of Cambridge
Richard Patterson – University of Cambridge
Martin White – University of Cambridge
Status
In progress, April 2026 to September 2030
Unit role
Unit led study in collaboration with University of Oxford and Queen’s University Belfast
Funding
Medical Research Council programme grant UKRI1478
Data sharing
There are no data for sharing at present.
Further information
PHOENIX builds on many years of research in the Population Health Interventions group. These are a few of the key publications that describe the evolution of our thinking in this area:
In the evidence synthesis work package of PHOENIX, we are exploring ways of applying the principles of evidential pluralism, for example by building on approaches such as 'evidence based medicine plus' (EBM+) and 'evidence based policy plus' (EBP+), to the more thoughtful synthesis of evidence to guide public health intervention strategies in complex systems.
We are advertising a PhD studentship entitled Rethinking evidence synthesis for public health linked to the PHOENIX research programme on the CAM-DTP website. We welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in applying or developing methods of this kind in our topic area. This might entail working with quantitative evidence, qualitative evidence or both; and it might entail working on evidence synthesis alone, or in combination with primary quantitative or qualitative analysis.
Pre-application enquiries
It is not necessary to secure CAM-DTP funding to undertake a PhD on this topic. If you are successful in the competitive selection process for PhD supervision in our department, you will be considered by whichever University or external funding schemes you are eligible for as part of the application process.
If you are interested in the possibility of applying to study with us, please:
Review the background material and references above
Review the general instructions for applying for PhD studentships in IMS Epidemiology
Ensure you meet the University's mininum academic requirements for postgraduate study
Ensure you have demonstrable evidence of research interest in public health in general, and diet, physical activity or transport in particular
Ensure you have demonstrable experience in systematic reviews or other forms of evidence synthesis, evaluating interventions, mixed methods research or systems science
Then make a pre-application enquiry by email to David Ogilvie outlining your research ideas. We are not asking for a full research outline at this stage, but if you were to proceed with an application you would ultimately be required to 'Describe your proposed research project or topic and the type(s) of methodological approach you wish to undertake.' We will then be able to advise you further.
