About the Evaluation team
Guided by the Unit’s principle of “Better evidence, better decisions, better outcomes”, we combine analytical rigour with practical insight and rapid methods, helping you understand what works, for whom, and why – to improve services, reduce inequalities and deliver better outcomes.
The Strategy Unit Evaluation Team is a leading evaluation partner to the NHS and the wider health and care sector, delivering independent, high-quality evaluations that inform real-world decisions. We deliver a range of evaluations to meet our clients’ needs, from rapid analyses to multi-year complex programmes, drawing on our team of qualitative and quantitative experts – and specialising in mixed-method approaches.
As part of the NHS, we work without a profit motive, reinvesting our expertise to support the system and share learning widely. We partner with community engagement experts to ensure meaningful involvement from citizens – helping to generate insights that are relevant, equitable and actionable.
Why work with us
We provide support at every stage of your evaluation journey, from helping make your work evaluable by design to generating robust evidence of impact.
We are committed to inclusive, high-quality evaluation that reflects the populations services are designed to support. Working with us means:
- Evaluation designed for action – we focus on producing insights you can use, quickly and confidently
- Deep NHS insight and data access – we understand the system and work securely with national and local datasets
- Rigour at pace – we balance methodological strength with the realities of delivery timelines
- Open and transparent approaches – we share methods, code, and learning to maximise impact across the system
- Inclusive by design – we work to remove barriers to participation and ensure diverse voices shape evaluation
- Quality outputs – we tailor our outputs to your audience, whether that’s senior leaders, front-line healthcare professionals, or people with lived experience.
We work with clients across health and care, the wider public sector, and charities, including:
- NHS England and regional teams
- Integrated Care Boards
- Hospital trusts and provider organisations
- Regulators
- National and local charities including Macmillan and Diabetes UK.
What we offer
We use a mix of qualitative, quantitative and evidence review approaches. We triangulate across our findings where possible to build a complete picture of how a programme works.
Our access to national and local health and care datasets such as Secondary Uses Service (SUS) and the Community Services Dataset (CSDS), combined with advanced data linkage enables us to track outcomes across services and over time.
We also build your internal capability through logic model training workshops and practical tools helping teams design and evaluate their own interventions.
Meet the team
Our multidisciplinary team brings expertise from health, social care, policy, and research, offering rich and diverse perspectives – specialising in rapid approaches.
We work collaboratively across the Strategy Unit to draw on a wide range of analytical and subject-matter expertise - ensuring our work is both robust and grounded in practice. We also work in partnership with organisations with specialist skills in community engagement and research, such as Ipsos and People Street. Through collaboration, we bring together the right expertise to meet project need.
Our work
We deliver evaluations ranging from small pilot studies to complex, multi-year programmes. If you would like to know more about our work, contact our Head of Evaluation, Paul Mason (paul.mason14@nhs.net).
Health and care programmes
Heart Failure Targeted Funding Programme 2023/24 Evaluation
The Heart Failure Targeted Funding Programme was an NHS Eng
Hydration, UTIs and older people: learning from NHS pilots about how to improve care
Our evaluation of hydration-focused interventions for older people found promising signs of impact and highlighted the practical and systemic challenges of delivering and sustaining change.
Models of Care
A fairer funding future for general practice: lessons from Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB
Our evaluation of the Health Equity Payment (HEP) scheme in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland highlights how flexible, needs-based GP funding can support more equitable care.
Evaluation of the Dudley New Care Models Programme
The Strategy Unit led the evaluation of the Dudley Vanguard programme.Addressing inequalities
Adopting the Core20PLUS5 approach: different strokes for different folks?
The Core20PLUS5 approach is seen b
Strengthening ethnicity data across the NHS: developing the national improvement plan
Race (based on shared physical characteristics
The NHS as an anchor institution: addressing fuel poverty
The number of households in fuel poverty in Sta
MDSN: Evaluating Social Prescribing Literature Review
Evaluating Social Prescribing – Literature rev
Left Shift
Virtual wards: Patient and unpaid carer experiences of ‘hospital at home’ care
Our evaluation of patient and carer experiences of virtual wards found widespread benefits and highlights areas for improvements parti
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.
Urgent Community Response – What Works?
The Strategy Unit, with our partners Ipsos, has been commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSEI) to provide a long-term national evaluation of the Urgent Community Response programme rolled-out across England. The programme aims to shift resources to home and community-based services as part of the NHS commitment to providing the right care, to the right people, at the right time. And there are a range of outputs from the early work that provide learning for local systems as they develop their services.
COVID-19
We don’t just need to hear ‘you are more affected’ - what’s the action?
The experience of minority ethnic people symptomatic for COVID-19 in the first UK wave of the pandemic.
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.
How can we learn from changes in practice under COVID-19
During the COVID-19 pandemic we have seen rapid changes in ways of working.
Primary and Community Qualitative Insights
The COVID-19 response required rapid change and innovation across health and care.
Resources and insights
We are committed to building evaluation expertise in the NHS and our wider partners. To support this, we have published a free, interactive evaluation guide to help you understand how to commission, design and delivery evaluation.
A Guide to Effective Evaluation: Design, Principles and Practice.
Our team of experts regularly post blogs, presentations and short reads about our evaluation experience, designed to keep you updated on the latest insights.
Contact us
If you would like a formal (or informal) discussion about your evaluation needs, please contact our Evaluation Lead, Paul Mason: paul.mason14@nhs.net