Leveraging Men’s Social Networks to Improve Health Engagement in Rural and Coastal Communities

About the Project

Do you want to shed light on place-based health inequalities and contribute to improving the health and wellbeing outcomes experienced by rural, coastal and remote communities?

Applications are invited for fully funded, three-year PhD Studentships within the Lincoln Institute for Rural and Coastal Health (LIRCH), the country’s first integrated, multidisciplinary research Institute dedicated to rural and coastal health research. With £10.9m of funding from Research England, this innovative centre is striving to understand the intersection between place-based deprivation and poorer outcomes for health and wellbeing. Successful students work on projects that aim to make a real difference for affected communities, by investigating challenges including but not limited to aging populations, healthcare workforce shortages, housing issues, and transportation challenges. LIRCH work closely with local commuities and there is an expectation that students will spend dedicated time within LIRCH and our surrounding Lincolnshire area to support connectivity and awareness.

The LIRCH fully funded studentship package includes:

• PhD tuition fees paid (home fee rate*).
• Tax-free stipend to cover living costs.
• Research Training Support Grant (RTSG).
• Additional funding available to support skills development, outreach and dissemination, attendance at summer schools, and research events.

Students can also expect to benefit from the opportunity to develop their career, working alongside and in collaboration with experienced and supportive academic colleagues, as well as joining an existing cohort of students working in a similar field.

This is a fantastic opportunity to support the development of a research agenda to understand and improve the health and wellbeing inequalities faced by rural, coastal and remote communities.

Please note, we are unable to provide financial support after the 31^st July 2029 due to the fixed end date of our project. Therefore, our PhD Studentships are not available to international students.

Project Three: Leveraging Men’s Social Networks to Improve Health Engagement in Rural and Coastal Communities

Project Overview - Men consistently underutilise preventative health services despite experiencing higher rates of morbidity and premature mortality. This disparity is particularly pronounced in rural, coastal, and socioeconomically deprived communities, where structural and individual level barriers further limit engagement with healthcare services.

Traditional provider-led, invitation-based approaches have demonstrated limited effectiveness in reaching underserved male populations. Emerging international evidence and early exploratory research undertaken by our team suggest that peer network–based approaches may offer an acceptable and scalable mechanism for improving engagement in other settings.

The evidence developed through this programme of research will support the development of innovative, network-informed strategies to increase men’s uptake of preventative healthcare in rural and coastal communities.

Aims and Objectives - The project will investigate whether interventions leveraging men’s social networks can reduce gender disparities in preventative healthcare uptake. It will aim to characterise the structure and function of men’s social networks in rural and coastal communities, and to understand how health information, norms, and behaviours spread through these networks. The research will also quantify spatial and temporal patterns of male healthcare engagement. Our goal is that the findings of this PhD will inform the co-design of a network-based intervention to increase screening uptake.

Methodological Approach - This project offers the opportunity to build a mixed-methods research programme with a strong quantitative focus. The candidate will work with the supervisory team to shape the research design. It will include quantitative social network analysis to map personal or whole-network structures, examine properties such as centrality, clustering, and homophily, and explore pathways of information diffusion and behavioural influence. Qualitative and participatory methods will complement this, these may include in-depth interviews and/or focus groups to explore masculinity, health-seeking behaviours, and trust.There will also be opportunities to analyse routinely collected NHS and local authority data, including screening uptake and primary care utilisation, using small-area and spatiotemporal approaches to understand patterns of engagement and assess geographic accessibility and spatial inequalities.

Training and Skills Development - The successful candidate will have opportunity to develop expertise in advanced quantitative and qualitative research. Components of this could include regression modelling, spatial analysis, and mixed-methods social network analysis. There would also be opportunities to develop skills in the analysis of administrative health datasets and develop skills in co-production and community-engaged research, alongside training in analytical tools such as R.

Expected Outcomes and Impact - This PhD will generate new insights into how social networks influence men’s health behaviours and engagement with preventative services. It is expected to culminate in the candidate contributing to an external funding bid for a large-scale intervention and evaluation, while generating policy-relevant evidence to inform strategies addressing gender inequalities in health. Conducted in partnership with local public health and NHS stakeholders, the project aligns with national priorities on prevention, health inequalities, and rural and coastal health.

For informal inquiries, please contact Dr Paul Mee (PMee@lincoln.ac.uk)

Applications

If you are a dynamic, focused graduate with a relevant first or upper second-class honours degree (e.g. public and population health, nursing, social and behavioural sciences, social policy, environmental and place-based health) a Master’s degree or equivalent professional experience that directly relates to rural or coastal health, then we want to hear from you. The current round of applications closes on 17^th May 2026.

Apply now by sending the following documents to the LIRCH team for consideration: cohsstudentships@lincoln.ac.uk : with the subject of: LIRCH PGR Application.

• Your academic CV (no longer than 2 pages) that includes information on your research and teaching and/or professional practice experience and achievements.
• Personal statement (no longer than 1 page) should outline how your qualifications, skills and experience meet the requirements, why you feel you would be well suited to the studentship at LIRCH that you are applying for as well as a brief overview of your approach to conducting this research.
• Contact details for at least two academic references
• Transcript of your first degree
• Transcript of your master's degree and any other previous degrees