The Centre for Health Policy was established in 2014 by Co-Directors Lee Knifton and Neil Quinn, with support from Alec Morton, Management Science, and Professor Sir Harry Burns, Scotland’s former Chief Medical Officer, as Chair.

Strathclyde’s motto of being ‘a place of useful learning’ was core to the rationale for creating the Centre for Health Policy. A key motivation for establishing our Centre was to bring together, and help showcase, Strathclyde’s wide range of policy-facing, health-focused work. Over time, we have developed an array of partnerships with third sector and policy organisations, several of which now offer placement-based dissertations for our MSc Health and Social Policy students.

From the start, our aim was to take a broad approach to ‘health policy’. Our focus has always been on understanding and influencing the wide-ranging policies that shape people’s health, including via social and economic factors such as housing, work and wealth. Many of our research projects focus on understanding how socio-economic factors shape health and our teaching programmes embed this holistic approach to considering how systems change can help improve health.

Strathclyde’s socially progressive ethos is reflected in both our ongoing concern with tackling inequalities in health and in our work to bring communities into conversations with researchers and policymakers. Many of our research projects place community engagement at their heart.

We also pride ourselves in the central role that public engagement plays in our postgraduate teaching (e.g. notably via the MSc Health and Social Policy’s innovative core module, Co-Production and Engagement in Health Policy and Practice). Other CHP led modules include Inequalities and Social Policy, which takes a holistic approach to examining intersecting inequalities, and Health Policy from an International Perspective, which showcases some of our international research and teaching links. In 2025-2026, our third year of running the MSc Health & Social Policy, student numbers reached unsurpassed levels.

Strengths and Opportunities

Our programmes are nested within a set of world-class initiatives at Strathclyde that offer unparalleled opportunities for Centre for Health Policy staff, partners and students and for external collaborators:

• Technology: As Scotland’s leading international technology university Strathclyde leads the national Digital Health & Care Institute, and our Technology and Innovation Centre hosts Health Technologies at Strathclyde
• Engineering and Science colleagues lead programmes addressing food, renewable energy and water availability  in Asia and Africa, including a long-term community health programme with Malawi.
• Young people: Strathclyde hosts several nationally-funded centres of excellence including The Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children and the Centre for Youth and Criminal Justice
• Public Mental Health: We are Scotland’s leaders in public mental health including: Editing ‘Public Mental Health: Global Perspectives’ and ‘The Journal of Public Mental Health’; joint programmes with Yale University, New York University, Illinois Institute of Technology, The Scottish Recovery Network, Health and Social Care Alliance, Turning Point, Mental Health Foundation, NHS Health Scotland, NHS Lothian and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde; and collaboration with the WHO mental health team.