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.
Population health implications of the Covid-19 pandemic
Our new report for The Midlands Decision Support Network (MDSN) presents findings of the effects of the care disruption, from the Covid-19 pandemic, on population health. The in-depth analysis identifies which patients and health conditions should be the focus of future efforts in reducing…
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.
Strategy Unit analysis of air quality highlights inequalities
Poor air quality is the largest environmental risk to public health in the UK and central London has the highest levels of particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide. The Guy’s and St. Thomas’ charity, now operating its programmes under the Impact on Urban Health banner, have…
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…
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. We have seen an increase in collaboration, particularly through digital platforms, the sharing of data, and people describing ‘true system working’. So how do we capture innovations and changes in practice? How do we learn…
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…
Midlands Population Health Management Academy
The Midlands Population Health Management Academy was part of a programme of support, commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement (Midlands) working in partnership with the Local Government Association and Public Health England. The Programme ran from March 2019 to March 2020. It was designed…
Clinical Workforce Scenarios for the Black Country
The future is highly uncertain. Unless we consider the diverse factors that could affect health, our plans will lack creativity and sustainability. The challenges facing NHS systems are headline news: NHS structures are frequently the subject of organisational change; new policy directives; funding…
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. …
Using logic models in evaluation
Logic models are increasingly being used to support the design and evaluation of complex change in the NHS. This briefing provides a brief introduction to logic models and how they can be used to support evaluation of change.