Leo Wall Performance & Insight Lead, Manchester City Council
Leo's professional career has centred on analytics, research, and the integration of data-driven insights to inform policy and practice. I am committed to leveraging evidence-based decision-making, fostering collaborative partnerships, and developing research capacity to drive meaningful improvements for communities.
He has worked in analytics and research for around 20 years, mainly within local government at Manchester City Council, but also in and with the NHS. His work has including working on health and care integration as part of the GM devolution linking up data across health and social care to understand demand and the opportunities for using integrated data to better understand needs and services. Leo led the design and delivery of the evaluation of new care models in Manchester. Over the last few years, he has managed the data, performance and analytics teams in MCC that support Children’s and Adults services and has been particularly interested in opportunities for using integrated data to better understand needs and services0
Leo completed a master's degree in Research Methods and Statistics at the UoM and, more recently, has worked with the UoM to develop a research partnership focused on social care research. Their first project developed a risk stratification model for Adult Social Care. He is currently an honorary research fellow with UoM.
Over the last few months, Leo has taken on the role of leading the HDRC research team in Manchester, aiming to further develop research capacity and capability by working with partners and community organisations to enhance research evidence in decision-making.
Prof John Wright Director of Research, Bradford Institute for Health Research, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
John Wright is a doctor and epidemiologist with a background in hospital medicine and public health in the UK and in Africa. He established and leads the Bradford Institute for Health Research and Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research. He is Director of the NIHR Yorkshire and Humber Applied Research Collaboration and Visiting Professor in Clinical Epidemiology at the Universities of York, Bristol, Leeds, and Bradford. In 200,7 he set up the Born in Bradford (BiB) cohort study, and in 2016 set up the world’s first interventional birth cohort, Born in Bradford’s Better Start. He leads Connected Bradford, one of the richest whole system datasets in the UK, and established ActEarly to develop a whole systems City Collaboratory approach to improving the health and life chances of children from deprived communities in London and Yorkshire. John has worked to develop sustainable public health programmes in Africa for 30 years and has reported for the BBC on programmes covering Born in Bradford, Ebola, and The NHS Frontline.
Research group/project website: https://bradfordresearch.nhs.uk/
Xingna Zhang Research Fellow, University of Liverpool
Xingna aspires to be an internationally leading researcher, addressing health inequalities and improving health for children. He trained as a geographer and is transitioning into health research. He currently holds a fellowship to evaluate health and education inequalities of autistic children using ECHILD, funded by Administrative Data Research UK (https://app.dimensions.ai/details/grant/grant.1405198). Recent work has focused on using natural experiments to evaluate the impact of local and national socio-economic and public health policies upon health inequalities, a niche area in the intersection of Human Geography and Public Health.