Welcome to the Midlands Analyst Network

Thank you for being part of our growing community! If you are an analyst who works in health & care or the wider public sector, then join the Midlands Analyst Network!

Launched in April 2020, this thriving community now connects almost 1,300 members from a wide range of organisations - mainly in the Midlands, but increasingly from across the UK. The Network provides a supportive space for analysts to share ideas, resources, and good practice, as well as to seek advice, spark debate, and develop skills together.

I love how the huddles have grown into a space beyond simply sharing ideas and work, to a regular opportunity for analysts to come together as a community. They frequently lead to insightful and previously unconsidered questions and debates and also serve as a fantastic welcoming opportunity for those dipping their toes into the world of analytics and improved decision making. Andi Orlowski, Director of the Health Economics Unit

Meet your Network lead: Rachel Caswell

Rachel is a Senior Healthcare Analyst at the Strategy Unit and the Lead for Training & Development. She's passionate about developing the Network and supporting analysts across the system to connect, learn, and lead through collaboration.

Fortnightly Huddles

At the heart of the Network are our fortnightly online Huddles, hosted on MS Teams (see link below). The Huddles cover a large range of topics and you are very welcome to join one at any time – for quick access to a Huddle, just follow the link below.  You don’t have to be a member of the Midlands Analyst Network to come to a Huddle but if you’d like to be kept up to date with all future Huddles and training opportunities then just contact Rachel (rachel.caswell@nhs.net) and we’ll take it from there.

We try to keep them as informal but as informative as possible and welcome contributions from Network members as well from academia, subject specialists, national and occasionally international presenters.

If you have any queries about the Huddles, how to access them, if you want to find out what’s gone before, or you want to present then please contact Rachel.

Next Huddle: 2nd April (11-12): Socio-economic deprivation and changes in self-reported health over a decade

In this session, Freya Tracey (The Health Foundation) and Rhian Davey (Office for National Statistics) will present a recent data release and briefing exploring how people’s self-reported health changed between 2011 and 2021, using linked census data.

Good health underpins people’s ability to work and live fulfilling lives, yet the UK faces a growing working-age health challenge and widening health inequalities. Self-reported health is also a key component of healthy life expectancy, making it highly relevant to current policy and public health debates.

This analysis is the largest study of its kind to examine the links between self-reported health and socioeconomic deprivation over time. The findings show that where people live affects the rate of decline in good health across the working-age population, and that factors such as unemployment, economic inactivity, and housing tenure are strongly linked to people no longer reporting good health.

The session will cover:

• the methods used, including multivariate logistic regression
• the main findings from the analysis
• what the results mean for wider conversations in public health and policy
• the relevance of this work to current debates on healthy life expectancy and health inequalities

Same Teams link as usual and if you don't have this - it's here!

Click here to join the meeting Hop in at 11 am!