Explaining our work and the implications for UK policy.
Intervention Areas
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Identifying what needs to change for healthier urban development
Unhealthy urban environments present significant public and planetary health risks around the world, and the causes lie upstream in complex areas of public sector policy-making, governance and private sector control.
By working with a wide range of academic disciplines as well as a large number of stakeholders, we sought to uncover where to intervene to make the most impact, basing the decision on as deep an understanding as possible of the fundamental problems.
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Design Code Guidance – Relevance for Practice
In March 2025, Design Codes for Health and Wellbeing was published to fill an important gap in guidance on principles that should be incorporated in health-focused built environments. The publication is a key resource for planning and health authorities, investment funds and developers seeking to embed healthy ways of life in diverse local place settings and contexts.
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Adding value to existing government guidance with HAUS
The Health Appraisal of Urban Systems model (HAUS) demonstrates the health impacts of a wide range of characteristics of the urban environment to inform planners, investors and developers at the earliest stage of planning new places to live and work.
TRUUD are working with the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) Analysis & Data Division to adapt HAUS for use in the department and for inclusion in its appraisal guide.
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Evidence used in the HAUS model
The Health Appraisal of Urban Systems model (HAUS) demonstrates the health impacts of a wide range of characteristics of the urban environment to inform planners, investors and developers at the earliest stage of planning new places to live and work.
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New towns and grey belts: healthy place making or housing numbers?
Labour’s pledge to jump start housing delivery through New Towns and ‘grey belts’ is an important response both to housing and affordability issues as well as the major economic crises of the last few decades. However, without quality assurance and strategic incentives, this risks becoming a ‘quantity at all costs’ approach.
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Joining up government for public health
Realising Prevention: Practical Policies for Healthier Society
There is growing recognition that tackling complex social problems, like climate change and health inequalities, can only happen by building strong interconnections across policy jurisdictions and sectors. Over the decades, a slew of initiatives have sought to achieve more joined-up government in the UK, from Churchill’s abortive system of ‘overlords’ through to the short-lived levelling up agenda. Despite these and many similar attempts, Whitehall retains a structure of competing departmental fiefdoms.
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Empowering mayors for preventative health
Realising Prevention: Practical Policies for Healthier Society
The task of improving the nation’s health is currently split between the NHS and local government. These two vast and complex systems often struggle to work together effectively. The role of local government in England’s health policy should not be underestimated. It includes the £23.69bn social care budget and a £3.6bn public health grant, both of which come with statutory duties that local authorities must fulfil. While this is dwarfed by £181.7bn NHS budget, it is in the areas of social care and public health that we find the roots of the pressures on the NHS. And yet, preventative approaches are only a tiny fraction this vast NHS budget.
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Planning reform and public health
Realising Prevention: Practical Policies for Healthier Society
With 708,000 overcrowded households in England, it is clear why the government wants to build 1.5 million new homes over the course of the current parliament. In recent years, both parties have repeatedly insisted that reforming the planning system is the key to unlocking housebuilding. The Labour Government have laid out extensive reforms to the planning system in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
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Tackling health inequalities with healthy urban development
Realising Prevention: Practical Policies for Healthier Society
Since the landmark Marmot Review was published in 2010, every Labour and Conservative manifesto has promised to rebalance health from treatment to prevention. And yet, despite the ambitions of politicians, change has been far too slow in recent decades.
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What ‘health’ means and why that matters
This policy explainer is split into three sections.
1. The first section explains why it is important that that we ask what ‘health’ means;
2. The second examines three main areas of contemporary debate linked to ‘health’; and
3. The third sets out the implications of these for policy and for political responsibility.
We pay particular attention to preventative policies: those that aim to create the right conditions in society for both a lower incidence of ill health, and better and fairer enjoyment of good health by all.