Top Menu

  • GitHub
  • Midlands Analyst Network and Huddles
  • SU Insights
  • Sign up for updates
The Strategy Unit

Main navigation

  • About Us
  • Our work
  • Services
  • Contact
  • Training
  • GitHub
  • Midlands Analyst Network and Huddles
  • SU Insights
  • Sign up for updates
  1. Home

Our work

  • Show all
  • Better use of analysis and decision making
  • System thinking and system working
  • Primary, community and social care services
  • Urgent and emergency care
  • (-) Inequalities
  • MDSN
  • Wider determinants of health and prevention
  • (-) Elective / planned care
  • Mental health
  • End of life
  • Specialised services
  • Maternity services and child health
  • (-) Show all
  • Comparative analysis
  • Evaluation and impact assessment
  • Futures thinking
  • Complex modelling
  • Problem structuring
  • Strategy development
  • Evidence reviews
  • Learning and development
  • Economic analysis
  • Population mapping
  • Options appraisal
  • (-) Show all
  • Report
  • Blog post
  • Long read
  • News
  • (-) Show all
  • Abeda Mulla
  • Alexander Lawless
  • Alison Turner
  • Andrew Jones
  • Andriana Vinnitchok
  • Andy Hood
  • Bethany Mitchell
  • Chris Beeley
  • David Callaghan
  • David Frith
  • Ellie Jones
  • Fraser Battye
  • Jacqueline Grout
  • Jake Parsons
  • James de Lacy
  • Jane Greenstock
  • Justine Wiltshire
  • Karen Bradley
  • Kathryn Rogers
  • Katie Davies
  • Katie Spanjers
  • Luigi Siciliani
  • Mahmoda Begum
  • Marya Mobeen
  • Matthew Revell
  • Mike Woodall
  • Mohammed Amin Mohammed
  • Natasha Stephenson
  • Paul Mason
  • Paul Seamer
  • Peter Spilsbury
  • Rachel Caswell
  • Richard Ward
  • Romaana Kapadi
  • Sam Callanan
  • Sarah Lucas
  • Sheila Ali
  • Shiona Aldridge
  • Simon Bourne
  • Steven Wyatt
  • Strategy Unit
  • Tom Poustie
  • Zaheera Teladia
Long read 10/05/2023

Inclusive Elective Care Recovery

These case studies present the key features and learning from local initiatives which championed inclusive approaches to elective care recovery.

Report 03/05/2023

How is growth in diagnostic testing affecting the hospital system?

Diagnostic services, such as medical imaging, endoscopy, and pathology, have grown substantially in recent years and at a faster rate than most other healthcare services. Increased diagnostic testing brings benefits to patients, but rapid growth of this service area within a complex, adaptive system such as the NHS is likely to have had unintended consequences. Midlands ICBs wanted to understand the impact of diagnostic growth on hospital services.

Menopause and the NHS workforce graphic
Long read 07/03/2023

No more suffering in silence, we want to talk about the menopause

To mark International Women’s Day on March 8, Karen Bradley, Principal Consultant at the Strategy Unit, and Susan Blakey, Senior People Consultant at MLCSU, two advisors involved in the recent project, ‘Menopause and the NHS Workforce’, discuss its significance and share what they want to see happen as a result of the published report.

Socio-economic inequalities in coronary heart disease
Report 09/12/2022

Socio-economic inequalities in coronary heart disease

There are substantial differences in mortality rates from cardiovascular disease between socio-economic groups.  Our new tool provides an overview, for ICBs, of the points on the care pathway where inequalities emerge and are amplified

graphic showing inequality being erased with eraser
Report 04/11/2022

What are the ethical challenges in addressing inequities?

Produced by Angie Hobbs - the world’s first Professor in the Public Understanding of Philosophy – this paper examines the ethical questions raised by our report outlining strategies for reducing inequity.

Long read 27/09/2022

Helping ICSs to reduce inequalities in access to planned care

Are there inequalities in access to planned care? If so, what are they? Which groups ‘gain’ and which groups suffer? And what could be done to address any inequalities? In pursuing their objective of reducing inequalities, what could Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) do? What strategies and approaches are likely to be successful?

Blog post 27/09/2022

What matters when waiting? – involving the public in NHS waiting list prioritisation

As the NHS emerged out of the pandemic, it was confronted with the challenge of not only recovery of unprecedented waiting lists, but with inequalities which required attention. NHS leaders challenged providers to restore inclusively and at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, we have developed a way of doing just that, whilst simultaneously reducing waiting times for all.

Blog post 26/07/2022

Inequalities in access to healthcare - what’s our next move?

Our research, published in the Lancet Regional Health Europe, highlights substantial inequities in access to elective hip replacement surgery. We found no evidence that these inequities reduced between 2006 and 2016.

Report 09/05/2022

Strategies to reduce inequalities in access to planned hospital procedures

UPDATE 10th August: Now including briefing note for Integrated Care Boards on legal duties in respect of reducing inequalities. This report guides ICBs through the process.

Report 29/03/2022

Autism evidence scan identifies knowledge gaps

Diagnosing autism takes account of a person’s differences in social interaction and communication, sensory sensitivity, interests and behaviours. Yet autism varies hugely from person to person, both in how it looks and how it is experienced.

Report 23/03/2022

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.

Blog post 11/03/2022

Treating people on waiting lists: who decides what is fair?

Waiting lists for elective care are in the news. The national plan has been issued, with the expectation that lists will continue to rise for some years - and that long waiting will not disappear anytime soon. Addressing this ‘backlog’ will remain a fundamental challenge for some time to come.

Report 12/11/2021

Evaluation of Building the Right Support: Final Reports

Building the Right Support was a national plan to provide better support to people with a learning disability or autism.

Blog post 15/09/2021

Infant feeding problems, lockdown and attendance at Emergency Departments: what’s going on?

From our previous work, with Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation, we know that lockdown had a significant effect on attendance at Emergency Departments (ED). We also know that this effect was very unevenly distributed: some demographic groups stayed away far more than others.

10 min review
Blog post 06/08/2021

Decisions to admit patients are not solely determined by clinical risk

Whether or not to admit a patient is one of the most routine yet important decisions a doctor in an Emergency Department

Report 27/07/2021

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.

Report 06/07/2021

Measuring the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on population health

Measuring the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on population health

Report 22/06/2021

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.

Report 04/06/2021

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.

10 min review
Report 12/05/2021

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.

Pagination

  • Previous page Previous
  • Next page Next
The Strategy Unit
NHS Logo

Quick Links

  • COVID-19
  • Publications
  • News and Views
  • Contact
  • Cookies
  • Privacy
  • Accessibility statement

The Strategy Unit 

Copyright © 2025 | Website design by NHS Midlands and Lancashire / NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands.

Accessibility

100%
100%
Scroll to top