What we are doing
Making sense of ultra-processed foods
The team are currently working on an in-depth public dialogue exploring public attitudes of ultra-processed foods (UPFs). The project was commissioned and funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UKRI, and Sciencewise, with support from the Food Standards Agency (FSA). The dialogue aims to inform future research agendas by placing public perspectives at the heart of the conversation around UPFs.
As UPFs become a growing topic of discussion in public health and food policy, it is essential to understand how people perceive these foods, what they know about them, and what they expect from those who govern the food system. By listening to and learning from citizens across the UK we are exploring what they see as the most important questions to investigate. The dialogue will help ensure that future research and policy are grounded in real, socially relevant, concerns and aspirations.
Nuffield Foundation Grown Up? Journeys to adulthood
Hopkins Van Mil and the Nuffield Foundation want to ensure that important decisions about what matters in society always consider the views and experiences of children and young people. Together, they are undertaking a research project on journeys to adulthood, which aims to explore the encounters and attitudes of today’s generation of young people (with a focus on 14-24 year olds) in transitioning from adolescence to adulthood.
HVM has been asked by the Nuffield Foundation to create a Youth Insight Group (YIG) and work with them to design a series of deep dive workshops that will run for 12 months to help shape the Grown Up? Journeys to adulthood project and provide necessary challenge and insights as the project evolves. The YIG comprises 20 young people from a diverse range backgrounds across the UK, they themselves influence and inform what the YIG sessions focus on and how they shape the project. The deep dives involve a different groups of young people to explore three topics: education to work, digital lives and mental health.
South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub digital health innovation workshops
Hopkins Van Mil is delivering a series of Citizens’ Juries for the South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub in a joint mission to tackle healthcare inequalities and drive digital innovation. The involvement of local people in this project reflects wider efforts to embed public voices into research and directly shape the future of digital health technologies. This first jury marks an important step in building a health innovation system shaped by the people it serves.
The team at HVM are currently busy with the second phase of this project that aims to shift the focus of the project onto a younger demographic. Young adults with long-term health conditions face a distinctive transition as they enter adult healthcare services and this project positions them as individuals with unique needs, concerns and values. This is a necessary step in our endeavour to develop a charter that is collaborative, grounded in lived experience and tailored to real needs.
Prisons Reform Trust citizens’ jury on prison sentencing
At the end of 2024, the Prison Reform Trust commissioned HVM to deliver a Citizens’ Panel on sentencing in England and Wales. Although a public dialogue and various polls and surveys have been undertaken on public awareness of sentencing, this Citizens’ Panel was established to gain depth insights on the overarching system of sentencing.
Their message was clear: the current sentencing system is overly complex, poorly understood, and not delivering the outcomes society needs. Panel members called for a long-term, strategic approach to reform, one that goes beyond political cycles and puts fairness, safety and rehabilitation at its core. this is depenedant
NERC Forward Look
The team at Hopkins Van Mil have been working on behalf of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to facilitate a Forward Look consultation workshop, building on the Council’s 2023 public dialogue. Having invited participants from the previous engagement, we reflected on NERC’s long-term vision and explored how environmental science can better serve people and the planet over the next decade.
As NERC set out three Research and Innovation priorities: Green Growth, Environmental Security and Responsible Innovation, the aim of this facilitation was to gain and share knowledge and skills through partnerships with researchers, policy leaders, industry and the public. Gathering public insight on what matters most, how science impacts everyday lives and how people want to be involved in shaping the research that affects them will inform NERC’s new Public Engagement Strategy and help ensure that future science is grounded in public values, needs and aspirations.