University of Manchester academics are working closely with Manchester City Council to tackle health inequalites. Making Manchester Fairer, launched in October 2022, is Manchester City Council’s five-year action plan to address health inequalities in the city. The plan draws on lived experiences and research to address the socioeconomic factors that drive inequalities between people with the worst health and people with the best health.

Since April 2022, GM Policy Hub has been working with Manchester City Council to inform the Making Manchester Fairer action plan. Representatives from Policy@Manchester sat on the task group and facilitated academic briefings for the group’s theme leads.

One area that we particularly focused on was poverty. To inform this work, we brought together key academics with senior staff at Manchester City Council to discuss new and existing levers to mitigate against the cost-of-living crisis. This led to further meetings between staff at the council and academics at the University, along with two training sessions on rapid evaluation.

A longer-term project that informed the Anti-Poverty Strategy involved partnership working between members of the Council’s City Policy team and researchers from the University’s Austerity and Altered Life-Courses research team. This project focused on innovations in childcare.

Making Manchester Fairer is now in its second year of delivery. Since the action plan was launched, the GM Policy Hub and academics have continued to meet regularly with the delivery team to help ensure the work is evidence based. An academic insights group provides feedback and shares research, and we are looking at further support our researchers can offer.For more information on how we can support evidence-based policymaking, please contact policy@manchester.ac.uk