The Data, Knowledge and Research Directorate has been created as part of the Public Health Wales Strategy Working to achieve a healthier future for Wales, 2018-2030.
It brings together the extensive expertise of the health intelligence and research and evaluation divisions into one Directorate with key functions including:
- optimising data science, evaluation, research and knowledge capacity and capability to best support the organisation (and public services across Wales) in implementing its Long Term Strategy and embedding an ethos of knowledge as a strategic asset;
- effectively discharging the statutory responsibilities in relation to health intelligence and official statistics;
- establishing mechanisms to effectively mine, exploit and integrate data within the organisation, and that held by other partners, in order to inform action to improve health and well-being;
- supporting key stakeholders in understanding the populations they service to inform universal and targeted improvements in health and well-being through the provision of agile, responsive (and self manipulative data) and forward planned population health intelligence, research and evidence;
- through evaluation and impact programmes, developing and providing evidence of what works in an understandable and accessible way tailored to the audience in order to best understand and apply the impact of actions/interventions for targeted public health policy and delivery;
- establishing effective means to generate and disseminate knowledge including the development of effective and innovative methods to exploit web-based and digital platforms using both structured and unstructured data to develop targeted prevention interventions and improve health and well-being;
- building a high performing, agile and strategically focused research function across all of the public health domains;
- providing system leadership to support the building of an effective and ambitious academic public health pipeline in Wales; and
- building capacity and capability in data science, population health intelligence, research and evaluation across the organisation, the NHS and wider public services.
The Data, Knowledge and Research Directorate is made up of two divisions: