Norwich Institute of Healthy Ageing (NIHA)

The Norwich Institute for Healthy Ageing is a research centre based at the University of East Anglia (UEA) which investigates the individual and additive impact of nutrition, physical activity, smoking/smoking cessation, alcohol consumption, socialisation, medication adherence and sleep on health outcomes. The institute also develops and implements effective strategies to promote sustained population behaviour change in order to improve physical and mental wellbeing.

Task / Brief

The Gateway to Growth team was asked to conduct market research into pre-existing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses related to NIHA’s key themes. The objective of this task was to gain a better understanding of the types of courses available, the length of courses, the cost of courses, topics covered, how courses are delivered (i.e. online or in-person), intended audience and host institutions. This was done in order to identify gaps in the market for NIHA to create their own course offer.

Outcomes

At the end of the four-week-long project, the interns produced a database of courses compiled from a variety of sources including Coursera, Future Learn and The Open University, as well as various institutions’ own websites. In addition to this database, a summary document was produced highlighting key learnings from the research and a survey was developed to gain further insight into consumers’ past experiences/engagement with CPD courses and what they would want from a NIHA CPD course (i.e. cost, length and topics) at a later date.

Testimony

It was a pleasure to work with Zara and Sophie. They were professional in their approach and produced timely and high-quality work that allowed Norwich Institute of Healthy Ageing to complete our project ahead of schedule.”

– Emma Coombes, Research Fellow, Norwich Medical School

Working with NIHA on a market research project was fantastic. Our project brief was comprehensive and Emma always made sure we felt supported in our weekly catch-ups. Scoping out CPD courses for a specific topic took a lot of attention to detail and it surprised me how much I enjoyed being analytical. Summarising our research at the end was a great way to end the project and I hope we have helped make NIHA's end goal easier to achieve."

– Zara Krischer, Gateway to Growth Intern