Dr Rachael McClatchey

NIHR Senior Clinical and Practitioner Research Award (SCPRA)

Rachael is a Consultant in Public Health within the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, Department of Health and Social Care, and an NIHR Senior Clinical and Practitioner Research Award (SCPRA) holder at the University of Bristol.

Her work focuses on how the built and natural environment influence health and health inequalities. This includes housing, planning, transport, green space, climate, and the wider systems and policies that shape the places in which people live, work and age.

The five-year NIHR SCPRA supports Rachael to develop as a national academic-policy leader in healthy environments. The award combines research, public engagement and knowledge exchange activities to strengthen how evidence is used in decision making across government. A particular focus is understanding and improving cross-government working on healthy urban environments, recognising that many of the factors affecting health sit outside the health sector.

Through the award she is developing expertise in public involvement and engagement, complex evaluation, knowledge exchange and international research leadership.

Activities within the award include:

  • Working with members of the public to show to decision makers how places shape health and wellbeing.
  • Developing and testing approaches to strengthen collaboration across government departments.
  • Exploring the role of embedded public health expertise within a non-health government department.
  • Developing and evaluating tools that support healthier environment implementation.

The award aims to generate practical benefits for policy and practice, while also producing high-quality research that contributes to national and international understanding of how healthy environments can be created and sustained.

Further information