Learning about what works in urgent community response
The initial report from the national urgent community response (UCR) evaluation, along with an economic modelling tool to help service providers and systems understand the impact of UCR, is now available.
Inequities in children and young people’s mental health services
Good mental health during early years and childhood has a great bearing on health throughout life. By contrast, poor mental health can cast a long shadow. Consequences may include depression, self-harm, and poor physical health. Services recognise this. They aim to provide access to support in a…
Less noise and more light: using criteria-driven analysis to tackle inequalities
Reducing health inequality is a long-standing aim of health policy. Yet the gap between policy aim and population outcome has grown in recent years: on most measures health inequalities have got worse.
Increasing vaccine uptake
The purpose of this work was to identify the key features of local initiatives which encourage vaccine uptake in different population groups, and share these for others to learn from.
Socio-economic inequalities in access to planned hospital care: causes and consequences
Tacking inequalities in health is a long-standing NHS policy objective. Variation in the experiences and outcomes of different communities during the COVID-19 pandemic served to bring this issue back into focus.
Learning from lockdown: support for people experiencing homelessness
There are few clearer measures of societal health than homelessness. On this count, and despite its enormous material wealth, England is in poor shape. Relative to the recent past, and any country we might want to compare ourselves to, we have a problem with homelessness. The causes of homelessness…
Accessibility of perinatal mental health services for women from Ethnic Minority groups
Barriers to accessing mental health care during pregnancy and the first postnatal year (perinatal period) seem to be greater for ethnic minority women.
Primary and Community Qualitative Insights
The COVID-19 response required rapid change and innovation across health and care. As part of a wider package of evaluation support, from April to June, the Strategy Unit led some qualitative work (training and supporting CCG staff to conduct interviews) across an STP to capture learning from…
How will we know if Integrated Care Systems reduce demand for urgent care?
The implications of a blended payment system are far reaching: Decisions about planned activity levels will determine the total funding envelope for urgent care within a system and will influence the behaviour of healthcare providers and the services they deliver to patients.
Exploring Mental Health Inpatient Capacity
This report explores the pressures on inpatient mental health services across Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships in England, drawing on a wide range of datasets, published research and interviews with staff working on mental health services. The report was commissioned by and includes…
Lessons from the Vanguard: Procurement
Dudley was unique within the New Care Models programme for using a large-scale procurement exercise. This exercise therefore offers lessons for both policy and practice. These lessons are set out in a short ‘lessons from the vanguard’ paper, joint-authored by the Strategy Unit and Dudley Clinical…
Neighbourhood Network
The Strategy Unit wants to support Neighbourhood Working. We want to help make a success of different services – health, social care, voluntary sector (etc) – coordinating their efforts to improve health outcomes for local populations. To do this, we have initiated a learning network. …
Making the case for integrating physical and mental health services in England - National overview
This is a national overview report of our Making the case for integrating physical and mental health services reporting which took place in July 2017. The original reports looked at the physical health of people who use mental health services; life expectancy, acute hospital use and…
Horizontal or Vertical: Which way to integrate?
In 2011, Primary Care Trusts faced a difficult choice. The Transforming Community Services policy required a complete break of commissioner and provider functions. But what should PCTs do with the community health services they delivered; vertically integrate with an acute trust, horizontally…
Identifying Potential QIPP Opportunities - Dudley Example
Given the pressures within the NHS, being able to identify opportunities for efficiencies and improvements is vital to inform commissioning intentions. This report is an example of analytical work which to support commissioners. The objective of this report is to provide information to…
Making the Case for Integrating Mental and Physical Health Care - Full Report.
An analysis of the physical health of people who use mental health services: life expectancy, acute service use and the potential for improving quality and using resources more efficiently. The Strategy Unit, inspired by earlier research published by the Nuffield Trust, has created a ground…