Knowledge Exchange Fellowship in Community Resilience

The Knowledge Exchange Fellow from the University of Leeds will be placed with ETHOS Ltd, a digital health product and service company.

ETHOS are subcontractors on the LifeBand project, which is developing a movement and proximity-detecting wristband for uptake by the general public, especially vulnerable individuals (Lifeband end-users). LifeBand aims to not only support the containment of COVID-19 but also offers opportunities for improving well-being and safeguarding, and preventing social isolation.

ETHOS’ role is to engage stakeholder groups involved in these areas (e.g. public health teams, local authorities, and community support organisations) and assist with the rollout of the technology to Lifeband end-users. Through identifying and interviewing stakeholders, the Fellow will develop a digital Playbook for the widespread implementation of LifeBand in the event of government restrictions, to reduce social isolation and viral transmission within vulnerable communities.

The Playbook will contain detailed step-wise guidance, pathways, scenarios and case studies, tailored for and easily accessible to the stakeholder organisations supporting Lifeband end-users and concerned with community resilience. The downloadable Playbook will be made available through the websites of project partners in accessible formats that meet the identified needs of stakeholders, and launched at a networking event (alongside other supporting media).

Impact

• Enhanced relationships with identified end-user and community resilience stakeholders
• Wider adoption of academic impacts from research to support safety in deployment of technologies such as the LifeBand, for public health across commercial providers
• Support to the deployment of innovation and research at a time of exceptional pressures
• Embedding of LifeBand into strategies for resilient communities - leading to:
  • Greater coverage of contact tracing across the community
  • Enhanced capability within communities to become self-resilient and as a consequence, become more secure whilst also reducing pressures on government and health agencies
  • Improved wellbeing and safeguarding of vulnerable individuals
  • The data generated by the Lifeband project can be analysed to create insight on equalities, behaviours and activity-related health outcomes: having a Playbook embraced by stakeholders and embedded into community reliance increases the relevance of and opportunity for this data in influencing policy and practise related to social isolation, social networks and well-being
• The Playbook will be a sustainable long-term resource that goes beyond the lifetime of the Lifeband project.

Grant

ESRC Impact Acceleration Account