UN wins national research contract

​We are proud to announce that the University of Northampton’s Institute of Health and Wellbeing has won a national research contract to be the evaluation partner for Mind’s Get Set to Go campaign.

Get Set to Go, which will be launched in May, aims to improve the lives of 75,000 people with mental health problems through access to sport in their communities, thanks to support from Sport England and the National Lottery.

Eight local Minds will assist local people to identify the right sport for them – they will also work with the sport sector to help remove the barriers that people living with mental health problems can face when wanting to take up a sport. Mind will also be working nationally to raise awareness of the role that sport and physical activity has in keeping us well, and developing sport and physical activity content as part of its peer support network Elefriends*[1], to support and inspire people to become more active through sport.

The University of Northampton project team will be engaging with people with lived experience of mental health problemsto evaluate the impact of the initiative. The evaluation project is worth £90,000 to the Institute over the next three years.

Dr Florence Kinnafick, Lecturer of Exercise Psychology and Principal Investigator, commented: “We are absolutely delighted to be awarded the Get Set to Go evaluation project. Being part of an initiative that has so much potential for impact regarding the importance of physical activity on mental health recovery is exciting! Winning a national tender illustrates that all the hard work at the Institute of Health and Wellbeing is coming into fruition.”

The University of Northampton evaluation team consists of: Florence Kinnafick, Principal Investigator; Nathan Smith, Co-Investigator; Paul Appleton, University of Birmingham, Co-Investigator; Natasha Bayes, Researcher; and Katie Jones, project manager. To find out more about Institute of Health and Wellbeing’s work, visit their website.

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[1] Elefriends is an online community for people who are experiencing mental health problems to give, and receive, support from others.