Professor Simon Murphy

Area lead

Simon’s research interests focus on two main areas. The first focuses on understanding and explaining young people’s health and health related behaviours within their social context, drawing on socio ecological frameworks.  This work informs the development and piloting of sustainable complex interventions for health improvement that address influences on multiple risk outcomes and health inequalities. The second concerns the evaluation of theoretically driven complex public health improvement initiatives, with a particular concern for the social processes and contextual influences that impact on implementation and effectiveness. He has undertaken a large number of pragmatic randomised controlled trials of complex interventions utilising mixed methodologies, including a number of national policy trials. He is particularly keen to develop the quality of public health improvement research and is lead investigator for the national Schools Health Research Network linking school communities, policy, practice and researchers to develop and conduct helath improvement research in schools.