Thrive Aims

Bale of hay in the foreground in a field under a blue sky with white clouds.

 The mission is to conduct research that reflects rural lived experience, improves earlier detection and prevention, strengthens suicide prevention, expands digital solutions, and builds high-quality applied mental health research capacity in an historically underserved region. This will be achieved by the following:   

  1. Build sustainable, inter-disciplinary rural mental health research capability for our region by developing a pipeline of research leaders, ECRs, doctoral researchers, underpinned by strong mentorship and career development.  

  1. Build a credible platform for longer-term success, through submission of a high quality, competitive MHRG full award proposal within 24 months and positioning Univerity of Worcester as a Centre of Excellence for rural mental health research.   

  1. Embed meaningful People and Community Involvement and Engagement (PCIE) as a core principle across the programme, ensuring lived experience shapes research priorities, methods and impact pathways.  

  1. Transform regional research participation by addressing structural and contextual barriers to staff, patient and public participation, involvement and engagement in mental health research.   

  1. Translate research into policy and practice by producing evidence and insights that inform service design, commissioning and strategic planning across our H&W Integrated Care System. 

The programme also aims to establish the University of Worcester as a centre of excellence for rural mental health inequalities research.