Our foundations in public health and wellbeing

Even when Essex was a relatively small university, we consistently punched above our weight.

For decades Essex researchers across science and health, social sciences, and the arts and humanities have turned their attention to public health and wellbeing. We have a proven track record in developing high-impact, world-class research that informs policy and practice, shapes public understanding, and improves people’s lives.

Perhaps our greatest achievement, certainly our best known, is the ‘green exercise’ revolution – a term coined at Essex by researchers who transformed global understanding of the value of exercising in natural surroundings.

Our research community

Today we’re on a strategic growth trajectory which has enabled us to more-than-double our number of researchers since 2014. We are recruiting the very best research and education talent, and it’s these people – our research community, working in collaboration with partners and stakeholders – that are at the heart of our success.

Essex researchers are bold change-makers, innovators and reformers. We exist to make the world a better place though research, knowledge exchange and impact. Our work is driven simultaneously by values unchanged since the University’s creation more than 50 years ago and the very latest theories, methods and technologies.

Collaborating to make change

The complexity of today’s public health and wellbeing challenges require an interdisciplinary, collaborative approach.

We already have fantastic, longstanding relationships with health academics, local and regional government, health providers and service users across Essex and beyond.

Our Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing (IPHW) adds even more value to our work by providing a strategic focus, an intellectual home and critical mass. It is a public health and wellbeing hub – created for, occupied and used by a diversity of academic, professional and community stakeholders to share their experience, expertise and ambition to create something bigger than the sum of the parts.

Our collaborative, partnership-based approach ensures we are networking with the right people, and that our research reaches the right audiences and has the greatest impact on policy, practice, public understanding and health and wellbeing.