After twenty years at Cardiff University and ten years leading DECIPHer, Prof Simon Murphy looks back on DECIPHer’s growth and achievements
As I step down from the DECIPHer Director role after ten years, it is a chance to offer my good wishes to my colleagues as they take forward the next phase of the centre and to reflect on the journey that has led us to this point.
DECIPHer has established itself internationally as one of the leading centres of excellence in its field; conducting and translating research that has real world impacts, building unique research infrastructure, developing research careers, nurturing the next generation of research leaders and promoting its innovative work across the globe. It has been successful in securing Health and Care Research Wales sustainability funding till 2030 and will be taken forward by a new Director – Prof Graham Moore – and a renewed senior leadership and professional services team.
PHIRN – A first step in Wales
Twenty years ago the picture was very different. In 2004, the Wanless report Securing Good Health for the Whole Population highlighted the poor state of evidence for public health improvement and raised concerns that this was leading to policy inaction. In 2005, we established PHIRN, one of the first public health research networks to address this, with funding from what would become Health and Care Research Wales. PHIRN adopted many principles and approaches that are now routine practice. It was transdisciplinary (bringing policy, public, practice and research together), it was bult on coproduction and it used a research development group approach to develop rigorous research that considered intervention implementation, scale and sustainability.
DECIPHer – developing UK capacity
This meant that Wales was well placed for one of the most strategically important public health funding initiatives in the UK. In light of the Wanless report, a UKCRC Public Health Research Strategic Planning Group identified a need to develop academic capacity and methodological approaches, increase research on health behaviours and interventions, promote multidisciplinary collaboration and improve the use of existing data within the field. This led to the UKCRC initiative – a commitment of over £20 million by a consortium of eight funding partners to create six UKCRC Public Health Research Centres of Excellence.
DECIPHer, a partnership with Bristol and Swansea Universities, led by Cardiff, was successful in securing funding for one of those centres in 2009. An initial five years funding was successfully renewed for another five years. Our centre became a leading player in this new research community. UKCRC researchers from across the UK attended our short courses on complex interventions, evaluation methods and coproduction. We began to publish leading methodological guidance and position pieces that attracted short course attendees from across the globe and we began to deliver courses internationally.
DECIPHer’s unique position in the Welsh research and policy landscape, its internationally renowned reputation and UK and international networks also meant that it was able to support the development of major centres and infrastructure.
Network development continued to be a priority for DECIPHer. We worked with Northern Ireland to support the launch of their own PHIRN and provided advice and guidance in the North East of England for ASK Fuse. We launched ALPHA in 2010 , a young people’s involvement group, which soon established itself as a unique research resource across the UK, supporting research and being called on for advice by funders and policy makers. Then in 2013, we established The School Health Research Network (SHRN), the first national network of its type in the world. This is a partnership with Welsh Government, Public Health Wales and all schools across Wales. It established a national data research-ready school infrastructure along with capacity for coproduction and knowledge translation. SHRN is now an established infrastructure in Wales and has been supporting the diffusion of its approach across England Scotland, Europe and Africa.
A Welsh centre with UK and international reach
The ending of UKCRC funding in 2019 led to a successful funding application to Health and Care Research Wales as a Cardiff University centre in partnership with Public Health Wales. This phase saw us develop our international research collaborations and short courses across the globe. For the University, our research contributed to multiple Research Excellence Assessment panels and we provided impact case studies for two successive returns for Cardiff University.
DECIPHer’s unique position in the Welsh research and policy landscape, its internationally renowned reputation and UK and international networks also meant that it was able to support the development of major centres and infrastructure. This includes; The Wolfson Centre for Young People’s Mental Health (2020), a Public Health Intervention Responsive Studies Team (2020), a Health Determinants Research Collaboration (2023), a UK Behavioural Research Collaboration (2023), a NIHR Public Health Reviews Team (2024) and a successful joint post with Public Health Wales linking research teams from both organisations (2024).
The majority of the leadership team in this phase of DECIPHer began their careers as DECIPHer postgraduate students and early career researchers. This was no accident
The centre was now developing the next generation of research leaders in Wales, with DECIPHer sustained through clear succession planning. The majority of the leadership team in this phase of DECIPHer began their careers as DECIPHer postgraduate students and early career researchers. This was no accident.
Throughout our existence, capacity development and fostering leadership has been a critical element of our success. We have adopted a strategy that considers: How undergraduate and postgraduate placements can support the development of our PhD community; the development of first time co- and principal investigators through mentoring; promoting opportunities for distributed leadership and supporting our professional services research staff. This means that DECIPHer is now being led by an extremely capable Director and a senior and professional service team who have not only helped DECIPHer become what it is today but will take it to the next exciting level. I wish them all the best.