May/June 2021

EVENTS
ability to offer a really prepared community
for the Events Research Programme.
What has been the most challenging
aspect up to this point?
Timescales. Events are complicated –
there are a lot of moving parts. Public
health responding to a pandemic is also
complicated with a lot of moving parts! You
put the two together, and it’s super complex.
There’s a lot to consider – consequences of
actions that are interconnected in ways that
aren’t normally; ticket offices don’t normally
accept health information! They didn’t
have a process for doing that, so we had
to create processes for the world of events
to work efficiently with the world of public
health, and to communicate that to both the
scientific audience and the public attending
the events. Those timescales were the most
challenging.
What were your personal highlights of the
events that took place?
I think the finale at Sefton Park with over
5,000 people. I’ve never seen a crowd
cry happy tears – the event organisers
and the participants. The audience broke
out into song an hour before the bands
came on. There was an outpouring of
joy and suddenly you could see it was all
worthwhile, all of the very hard work on
the science and the logistics. You saw a part
of public health that’s about social fabric,
mental health and wellbeing just come
alive. A GP friend of mine was there, she’s
58. She wanted her teenage twins to go, but
they were just under age. She was crying
too and it was the most joyous, collective
experience I think many of us have ever
encountered and probably will ever
encounter. It was major goosebumps time.
So, what happens now?
You have the teams looking at the data
coming in, other colleagues in universities
in Loughborough, London, and Edinburgh.
They’re taking data from air quality sensors,
cameras, and the AI behind the cameras.
We’re looking at testing, social media, the
usual public health information closely
and we’re going to put all of that together.
Liverpool is the only place where all the
components come into a social critical
mass of multiple events happening as they
would be. These are realistic events, they
weren’t artificial. The Wembley events were
not as a big football match would normally
be run, but at the nightclub, I can tell you it
was pretty realistic because I was terrified!
That was full on – the festival was as it
would normally be. The business event was
as it would have been, so realistic evidence
will come out of Liverpool.
We will crunch the numbers and deliver
a draft report that goes first to government
in May, then fuller public reports come after
11 June. There’s now ‘Know How’ feedback
from all the teams who delivered the events
being populated and the data needs to be
crunched in the next week.
Who will you be working with to analyse
the results?
The Institute of Population Health has a
great health data science team who take
data from an integrated system that we have
in Cheshire and Merseyside called CIPHA
(Combined Intelligence for Population
Health Action). That gives us a feed, so the
CIPHA team have been working really hard
and matching ticketing and testing. We’ll
then be marrying the data that comes back
from the follow up tests once they have been
processed by our laboratory in Cambridge.
The teams have got the ability to flow
data from public health, NHS and ticketing
into the Institute of Population Health with
de-identified secure data. The teams who
worked on community testing are now
looking at events and they are used to
handling this kind of data. Marta Garcia-
Finana, David Hughes, Chris Cheney, Girvan
Burnside – they’re the team in health data
science. Michael Humann in psychology
has bust a gut to deploy questionnaires
to eventgoers at a military pace. Gary
Leeming and teams at the Civic Data
Cooperative have been helping to make
sure the data flows work between ticketing
and testing. Gary’s worked really hard with
his counterpart in events, Robin Kemp.
Everyone’s rolled their sleeves up and really
worked as one.
What does it mean to be part of the
University of Liverpool at this time?
I’m very proud because we’ve delivered on
our civic mission and founding principle
of ‘ennoblement of life’. We’ve made
science work very fast, and very deep with
social purpose. We looked at the needs of
underserved communities, we’ve studied
inequalities and Covid-19 extensively. We’re
now responding to the need of particularly
young people to reconnect in that way that’s
important for their formative experiences
for their general wellbeing. That has been
missing for a very long time. This university
has contributed to so many aspects of the
Covid response, I’m immensely proud of
being at the University of Liverpool.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Yes, I promise to revisit my dress sense in
a nightclub! The New York Times sent that
tweet out and I’ve acquired a label of the
‘Party Professor’ somehow. My friends have
laughed their heads off because they know I
can’t dance!
On the serious side, the main point I’d like
to make is teamwork. I am humbled and
delighted by how well the teams across the
University of Liverpool, local agencies and
city council, NHS and most of all the local
community, have just mucked in. There has
been 170 years of public health innovation
and the spirit of Liverpool is alive and well
– just as it was with TB in the 1950s and
cholera in the 1800s. There’s a grit, social
responsibility and determination that just
delivers on generosity of spirit in Liverpool
and it’s remarkable.
DISCOVER MORE
Find out more about
Professor Iain Buchan’s
Covid-19 work at
www.liverpool.ac.uk/
coronavirus/research-andanalysis/iain-buchan
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