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Welcome to the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing

The Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing is Durham’s flagship interdisciplinary Institute tasked with delivering the Health@Durham Strategy. Established in 2001, we foster research relating to human health and wellbeing in both developed and developing countries from the individual to global scale.

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Interdisciplinary approaches

Our mission is to encourage and support high calibre interdisciplinary research to understand and address human health challenges.

We do this through our Challenge Academies. Each has been carefully built to address local and global unmet need in health-related issues. Closely aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, these Academies have the interdisciplinary approach unique to Durham University built in. In this way, each Academy can address major problems in health and wellbeing, but also be responsive to new challenges as they arise.

We help our Challenge Academies grow, fostering networking, identifying and assisting with funding opportunities, expanding their internationalisation and ensuring impact through clinical, industry or policy collaboration. This approach is central to our core ethos where our Academies address the beginning (identifying the correct question), the middle (understanding who the problem affects and how) and the end (how we can use this knowledge to create purpose built solutions that don’t just help some of the people some of the time but all of the people, all of the time).

Health at Durham

We're a collaboration of 44 specialist centres, academies and projects, with over 40 undergraduate courses and postgraduate programmes. Unbound from clinic, we frame health differently. Our vision for health is for people to thrive in the places they live. We embrace physical, mental, social and environmental health, envisioned as a synergy of self, beliefs, culture, family, community and planet.

Our Undergraduate and Postgraduate Programmes

Explore over 40 undergraduate and postgraduate courses. From research methods to neuroscience, biology to technologies and sustainability. 
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Explore Health at Durham

Discover more about what is taking place across our three interrelated frames of health. From individual health to communities and environments.
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The Institute conducts and facilitates interdisciplinary research on health and wellbeing across the University Faculties. We support a community of Fellows, Postgraduate Associates, Research Centres and projects across almost all of the University's departments and schools. In collaboration with our sister Institutes at Durham University, particularly the Biophysical Sciences Institute and the Institute for Medical Humanities, and our external partners such as the AHSN, NHSA and BioNow, we address Health related research in a 360° way, looking at all of the influences on our Health and Wellbeing, and how they interact with each other.

Explore the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing

News

  • Reducing criminal reoffending among female ex-prisoners

    New research involving one of our psychologists reveals more about what drives female prisoners to reoffend, and how this can be better prevented.
    Five women standing between two pull-up banners
  • A new book on pain management: the natural way

    Plants relieving pain date back thousands of years to the power of the opium poppy. Botanicals are still in the limelight as people in pain turn to herbal medicines – natural botanicals, considered safe at recommended doses. Medications like opioids, or even aspirin, can be limited by their use for chronic Pain, either adverse addictive and health or gastric side effects, respectively.
    Plants for Pain book cover
  • BMLA 2026 conference – Brain-Gut Photobiomodulation therapy in ALS

    WRIHW Fellow, Professor Paul Chazot has been invited to present on his latest work on mechanisms and case studies using a novel Brain gut PBMT dual device.
    BMLA2026.png

A new book on pain management: the natural way

Plants relieving pain date back thousands of years to the power of the opium poppy. Botanicals are still in the limelight as people in pain turn to herbal medicines – natural botanicals, considered safe at recommended doses. Medications like opioids, or even aspirin, can be limited by their use for chronic Pain, either adverse addictive and health or gastric side effects, respectively.
Plants for Pain book cover

BMLA 2026 conference – Brain-Gut Photobiomodulation therapy in ALS

WRIHW Fellow, Professor Paul Chazot has been invited to present on his latest work on mechanisms and case studies using a novel Brain gut PBMT dual device.
BMLA2026.png

Get in Touch

Find out more about the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing.

Wolfson Research Institute

Room 236

Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing

C/O Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience

South Road

Durham

DH1 3LE

Tel: + 44 (0) 191 334 0013