Across the world, policy makers face the challenge of setting health care priorities, balancing the objectives of securing high quality, comprehensive healthcare without financial barriers to access. Priority setting involves technical analyses of clinical and cost effectiveness. However, it also involves social value judgments: these are judgments about, for example, justice, solidarity, respect for persons and dignity as matters of substance, and transparency, accountability and participation as matters of process. Often these judgments are controversial, and not least because decisions in health priority setting inevitably create 'winners' and 'losers' - those who receive treatments, and those who do not. As such, it is especially important that decisions in this field are clearly thought through and can be explained and justified to the public. However, in many contexts the social values involved in health priority setting are implicit and go unrecognised by policy makers - there is often a sense of 'muddling through', especially in countries where processes of health technology assessment are newer, less well established or less efficient. The challenge of addressing issues of social values in these countries is no less demanding, but the capacity to address it when many other challenges press can be limited, given the complexity of the values-based issues and the unfamiliarity of some policy-makers with them. This project aims to develop a template which will be a practical tool to help policy makers in their deliberations around social values in health priority setting. The template will set out the relevant social values and the range of ways in which they can be interpreted, in an intellectually coherent yet practical and accessible way. The template aims to offer a ready 'checklist' which can be easily adapted to local circumstances, and by which all policy makers can more easily identify, articulate and better address issues of social values in their decisions. It will enable clearer identification of the values and their social and ethical implications and, as such, will help policy makers both to reason more cogently in their deliberations and, ultimately, to render the decisions which issue from those deliberations more socially justifiable. In order to do this, and to ensure that the template is fit for purpose, we intend to work from information in real examples of priority setting decisions obtained from a network of international policy makers that we have helped establish with colleagues at NICE. We intend to expand the range of case studies we already have, and to establish an interactive web-based resource to house these and our ongoing research. We intend for the site to be a resource where policy makers can share experiences and learning, and where they can feed in their ideas to our research. There is much enthusiasm amongst the existing members of the network for this, and we intend the website to be not only a valuable resource in itself, but also to be a means of extending the existing network and strengthening links amongst partners. We will also hold a workshop at the 2012 Health Technology Assessment international conference which will provide an opportunity for the network to meet and for us to consult with members on the development of the template and to test its applicability. If funding for this project were secured, it would prepare the ground for a larger related project, a proposal for which is to be submitted together with NICE (the subject of a separate application and still under development). That larger project proposes to investigate empirically, through cross-national comparative analysis, how social values play a part in health priority-setting in different national contexts. Both the research carried out in the present project and the relationships built with colleagues in the network will be invaluable to this larger piece of work.

As well as its clinical guidelines and appraisals of new medicines, NICE produces public health guidance. This is designed to deal with various public health problems. For example NICE has produced guidance on tobacco control, alcohol abuse, preventing obesity and promoting physical activity. The guidance is based on a rigorous examination of international evidence and an assessment of the cost effectiveness of the interventions. Until 2013 the public health system in England was led by the NHS. This responsibility transferred to local authorities in April 2013. At the same time NICE acquires responsibility for producing quality standards in social care and public health. The principal audience for the guidance and the quality standards are local authorities. Until now local authorities have had no necessary link nor obligation to comply with NICE guidance. As the public health system changes, it is important that NICE is able to adapt its portfolio. As an organisation whose main currency is scientific evidence, it is proposed to study the process of knowledge transfer from NICE to local authorities in a systematic and scientific way. This research, instigated by NICE, is designed to capture a scientific understanding of the system changes, what will be required to meet the needs of the system and how best to engage with it. The study will investigate how the public health and social care guidance and quality standards produced by NICE will be received and implemented within local government and what systems will be developed to use it. It will study the barriers to and facilitators of information flow and implementation between NICE and local government, and within local government organisations. In consultation with relevant professional associations, it will also seek to identify areas in which effective processes have been set up and good outcomes achieved. Finally, it aims to develop a feasible method for monitoring the implementation of NICE's guidance and quality standards in local authorities. The work will be led by a partnership between NICE, University College London and the Local Government Association and a steering group set up to ensure the input of those at the "coal face" e.g. Chief Executives of Local Authorities, Directors of Public Health. The research will be carried out in three phases: 1.A survey of officers and elected members in local authorities to obtain a detailed description of the current knowledge of public health, the new system, NICE and the evidence based approach to public health. 2.Five case studies in five different councils in England to examine the usage / non usage of NICE guidance and standards. The case studies will be undertaken to provide descriptions of local systems and infrastructures, the processes for planning, strategic working, and interagency activity, partnerships, and intra local authority activity and inter NHS-local authority activity, including the Clinical Commissioning Groups and work with Public Health England. The descriptions will be obtained by reviewing formal local documentation and web-based resources, including the Joint Strategic Needs Assessments, and by a series of interviews with portfolio holders, other councillors and key members of staff, especially, Directors of Public Health, Leisure and Recreation, Planning, Transport, Housing, Children's and Adult Services and members of the Health and Wellbeing Boards. If possible, the operation of Health and Well Being Boards will be observed. 3.A conference convened by LGA to share the initial findings from the survey and the case studies with a broader group of local authority stakeholders to further elaborate the evidence and test its findings. The project will aim to further understanding and closer collaboration between NICE and local government as well as producing information of value to both organisations as the new public health structures and functions are developed in England.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

The creative industries are crucial to UK social and cultural life and one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the economy. Games and media are key pillars for growth in the creative industries, with UK turnovers of £3.5bn and £12.9bn respectively. Research in digital creativity has started to be well supported by governmental funds. To achieve full impact from these investments, translational and audience-facing research activities are needed to turn ideas into commercial practice and societal good. We propose a "Digital Creativity" Hub for such next-step research, which will produce impact from a huge amount of research activity in direct collaboration with a large group of highly engaged stakeholders, delivering impact in the Digital Economy challenge areas of Sustainable Society, Communities and Culture and New Economic Models. York is the perfect location for the DC Hub, with a fast-growing Digital Creativity industry (which grew 18.4% from 2011 to 2012), and 4800 creative digital companies within a 40-mile radius of the city. The DC Hub will be housed in the Ron Cooke Hub, alongside the IGGI centre for doctoral training, world-class researchers, and numerous small hi-tech companies. The DC Hub brings: - A wealth of research outcomes from Digital Economy projects funded by £90m of grants, £40m of which was managed directly by the investigators named in the proposal. The majority of these projects are interdisciplinary collaborations which involved co-creation of research questions and approaches with creative industry partners, and all of them produced results which are ripe for translational impact. - Substantial cash and in-kind support amounting to pledges of £9m from 80 partner organisations. These include key organisations in the Digital Economy, such as the KTN, Creative England and the BBC, major companies such as BT, Sony and IBM, and a large number of SMEs working in games and interactive media. The host Universities have also pledged £3.3m in matched funding, with the University of York agreeing to hire four "transitional" research fellows on permanent contracts from the outset leading to academic positions as a Professor, a Reader and two Lecturers. - Strong overlap with current projects run by the investigators which have complementary goals. These include the NEMOG project to study new economic models and opportunities for games, the Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) centre for doctoral training, with 55+ PhDs, and the Falmouth ERA Chair project, which will contribute an extra 5 five-year research fellowships to the DC Hub, leveraging £2m of EC funding for translational research in digital games technologies. - A diverse and highly active base of 16 investigators and 4 named PDRAs across four universities, who have much experience of working together on funded research projects delivering high-impact results. The links between these investigators are many and varied, and interdisciplinarity is ensured by a group of investigators working across Computer Science, Theatre Film and TV, Electronics, Art, Audio Production, Sociology, Education, Psychology, and Business. - Huge potential for step-change impact in the creative industries, with particular emphasis on video game technologies, interactive media, and the convergence of games and media for science and society. Projects in these areas will be supported by and feed into basic research in underpinning themes of data analytics, business models, human-computer interaction and social science. The projects will range over impact themes comprising impact projects which will be specified throughout the life of the Hub in close collaboration with our industry partners, who will help shape the research, thus increasing the potential for major impact. - A management team, with substantial experience of working together on large projects for research and impact in collaboration with the digital creative industries.