College Vice President leads £15 million health research initiative for East of England

A £15.3 million research collaboration designed to improve the health of the population of the East of England and reduce deep health inequalities in the region is being led by Murray Edwards Vice President Professor Steve Morris.

The five-year initiative, running from 2026 until March 2031, will address starkly differing health outcomes in the east of the country, including a seven-year difference in life expectancy between neighbouring populations. Communities in the region vary widely in terms of affluence, geography, age and ethnicity.

It will focus on early intervention and on ensuring the latest technologies help the hardest to reach communities.

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration East of England (ARC EoE) brings together NHS trusts, five universities including the University of Cambridge, local authorities, patient and public organisations and other partners to tackle multiple aspects of health across the region.

In addition to his college roles and Directorship of ARC EoE, Steve, a health economist, is the RAND Professor of Health Services Research in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow in Health Services Research here at Murray Edwards.

Research themes for the collaboration include prevention and early detection in health and social care; palliative and end of life care; social care, dementia and ageing; mental health and wellbeing; and measurement in health and social care. 

Here Steve discusses the collaboration:

Why is ARC EoE so important?

‘The East of England is a really diverse region. We’ve got thriving cities and very rural, isolated communities, and coastal communities. We have some of the most deprived populations in the country living not far from real affluence. And there are places where people are dying, on average, seven years earlier than their neighbours a few miles away. That is not an acceptable state of affairs. The whole point of ARC EoE is to do research that actually reaches those communities and makes a difference to them, not research that sits in a journal and goes no further.’

How will it improve lives?

‘The big shift we want to make is towards getting in earlier: in other words, prevention, early intervention, catching things before they become crises. Plus, making sure that when there are new tools, new data, new technologies that could help people, they reach the communities who need them most rather than just the ones who are easiest to serve. If we get this right, the work we do in the EoE should be influencing how care is delivered nationally.’

How do you feel to be leading the ARC?

‘I am honestly thrilled, but I’m also very conscious that it is a big job. This is a £15 million programme over five years, and that is a real investment in the health of this region. I feel that weight! But I also find it motivating. I have spent my career asking how we make the best use of limited resources in health care, and this role puts that question front and centre all the time. I feel very lucky to be doing it, and the ARC EoE team are amazing.’

ARC EoE involves not only the University of Cambridge, but the Universities of Essex, Hertfordshire and East Anglia, as well as Anglia Ruskin University. What are the advantages of collaborating with other universities?

‘This is one of the things I really like about the ARC model. It’s not an exclusively Cambridge operation. We pull in researchers from across the region, different institutions, different disciplines and backgrounds. And in my experience the most interesting work always happens at those boundaries, when people with different ways of thinking about a problem are in the room together. That is where you get something you would not have got on your own.’