King's College London

PHI UK's Population Mental Health Consortium recently hosted its first ‘sandpit’ — an interactive workshop to seed-fund projects in population mental health on the built environment, multiple long-term conditions and mental health.

The day brought together participants from various sectors, including early career researchers, non-academics, people with lived experience, voluntary organisations, and industry partners, to co-develop ideas for a project proposal within the area of population/ public mental health.

The day was chaired by Dr Caglar Koksal, Lecturer in Urban Planning at The University of Manchester in collaboration with Healthier Futures, Manchester Urban Institute and Future Everything.

Population Mental Health Consortium co-directors, Professor Jay Das-Munshi from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London and Dan Barrett from Thrive LDN welcomed participants who took part from across the UK from the following organisations:

• Ardwick Climate Action, a local community group

• Arup, a global development consultancy

• Birmingham City University

• Imperial College London

• Pure Innovations, a Manchester based charity

• Transport for London

• University of Dundee

• University of Huddersfield

• University of Leeds

• University of Manchester

• University of York

• Ulster University

• University College London

Participate, collaborate, explore

Some 50 people participated and shared ideas and knowledge about the themes of the built environment, multiple long-term conditions and mental health.

The strong focus of the day centred around participation, collaboration and exploration. The workshop was broken down into four sessions with distinct activities to understand and explore bold ideas in relation to complex issues and challenges, assess their potential feasibility and co-create proposals for small-scale research projects. The final session saw participants pitch their ideas in front of a judging panel which included:

• Dr Jan Hopkins, Greater Manchester Mental Wellbeing Programme Lead, NHS Greater Manchester

• Professor Jayati Das-Munshi, Professor of Social & Psychiatric Epidemiology, King’s College London; Co-Director, Population Mental Health Consortium

• Dan Barrett, Director, Thrive LDN; Co-Director, Population Mental Health Consortium

• Patrick Wong, Population Mental Health Consortium Manager

• Helen Daly, Research, Insights & Evaluation Lead, Thrive LDN

• Dr Caglar Koksal, Lecturer in Urban Planning, University of Manchester

• Professor Roger Webb, Professor of Mental Health Epidemiology, University of Manchester

Three successful collaborative projects were awarded initial seed funding of up to £30,000. These will explore:

• How the built environment impacts and shapes loneliness and mental health

• Perceptions of urban, environmental mental health

• Suicidality and the London Underground

Insight and energy

Professor Jayati Das-Munshi, Professor of Social & Psychiatric Epidemiology, King’s College London; Co-Director, Population Mental Health Consortium said:

It was a very insightful and energetic event, and we are delighted we could award some funding to participants to work together, across interdisciplinary boundaries.

The Population Mental Health Consortium’s mission is to bring together expertise and insight from across universities, public sector and communities to improve mental health and reduce mental health inequalities through the development and evaluation of long-lasting interventions.

The aim is to advance population mental health research by integrating diverse perspectives, policy, practice, and lived experience and these interactive workshops help to bring this work to life. We are very grateful to all the participants, and pleased to be able to kickstart bold new collaborations with seed funding.

The Consortium will be hosting two more sandpit competitions, this year, each designed to bring together participants from various sectors to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration to innovate new ideas for population health improvements.

Dan Barrett, Director, Thrive LDN; Co-Director, Population Mental Health Consortium, said:

We are looking to engage people who have not applied their expertise to population health previously, as well as prioritise early career researchers. Projects must align with the overall Consortium objectives of improving population mental health outcomes.

The sandpits will serve as platforms to explore innovative solutions for critical mental health challenges with a particular focus on upstream determinants. We look forward to future workshops and encourage people with an interest to take part.

What we heard from participants on the day:

Thank you so much for a great event. Very much looking forward to how the project progresses.

Well done…it was an enormously productive and fascinating day!

Future sandpits

The next sandpit event Children and Young Adults: Investigating mental health support within schools and digital platforms will take place at Midlands Arts Centre on Friday 20 June 2025.

In the Autumn 2025 we will hold our third sandpit event on Prevention of Suicide and Self-Harm: Exploring digital and technical interventions to prevent suicide and self-harm.

Find out more

• For more information and if you would like to get involved, please email popmh@kcl.ac.uk.

• Sign up for the Population Mental Health Consortium newsletter.

• Learn more about Population Mental Health.