The success of collaborative research

Just as 2008 ended, Marc Farr, Jess Wardlaw and Kate Jones were awarded the IJMR Collaborative Research Award from the Market Research Society. Jess is working with me on the Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Dr Foster Intelligence, while Kate is leading the GIS work on the Towards Successful Suburban Town Centres project. They’ve joined together to write the paper:

Farr, M., Wardlaw, J. and Jones, C. (2008)  Tackling Health Inequalities using Geodemographics: A Social Marketing Approach. International Journal of Market Research, 50, 4, pp. 449-468.

As the title suggests, the paper was about Dr Foster’s social marketing work and how we use geodemographic data to target health interventions, and compared the methodology to traditional market research methods. The statement from the award commission is rather nice:

‘This new Award recognises genuine co-operation between the practitioner (agency, client, etc.) and academic communities. Tackling Health Inequalities using Geodemographics – A Social Marketing Approach is an excellent example of the innovative methods being applied to the challenges faced by the UK public sector. It demonstrates how social marketing is being adopted in targeting healthcare priorities, and the role played by Dr Foster Intelligence as a public-private partnership in providing information to help achieve this goal.’

So well done to Jess, Kate and Marc!