The Health Foundation

Join us in Liverpool for #LabourPartyConference on Sunday afternoon as we bring together experts to discuss the public’s priorities for the NHS and social care. 📍Humber Pod, Convention Centre (inside the secure zone) 🕟16:30–17:30

Poor health is becoming a growing barrier to work and education for young people. In 2025, 44% of 16–24-year-olds who were not in education, employment or training (NEET) reported a work-limiting health condition, up from 26% a decade earlier. Our new briefing finds that restoring young people’s health to 2014 levels could add £7.3bn to the economy each year. Ahead of the final Milburn Review report, we set out practical recommendations to help young people with health barriers stay in, or return to, work and education, including: • Earlier, caseworker-led support for those at risk of long-term NEET status • Stronger mental health support in schools and communities • Better welfare and employment support for under-25s with health conditions. Supporting young people earlier could improve lives, strengthen the economy and reduce demand for more costly services in the future. Read our new briefing ⬇️ https://bit.ly/3Tk6UF9

I'm very excited to be heading to Liverpool on Sunday with brilliant colleagues from The Health Foundation for Labour Party conference. Do take a look at these timely and topical events: Sunday 27 September ➡️ The Health Foundation and Ipsos: What are the public’s priorities for the NHS and social care?, 16:30 – 17:30, Humber Pod, Convention Centre (inside the secure zone) ➡️ The Health Foundation and Resolution Foundation: Generation left behind? Tackling the NEETs crisis and health-related inactivity in young people, 18:00 – 19:30, Arena Room, Convention Centre (inside the secure zone) Monday 28 September ➡️ The Health Foundation and The Health Devolution Commission: Realising the potential of Burnham’s devolution agenda to improve health, 16:00 – 17:30, Albert Suite 3, Hilton Hotel (outside the secure zone) Look forward to catching up with lots of you in Liverpool!

It was fantastic to see such a strong turn out at our #NHSProductivityCommission report launch this week. The session was attended by 142 policymakers, NHS leaders and other key stakeholders who heard from expert panel along with our Chief Executive, Jennifer Dixon. Tera Allas CBE, co-chair of the Commission and leading expert on economic growth, productivity and public policy, set out what is needed for a more productive NHS: 'The NHS exists to support longer, healthier lives – the outcomes that matter most to people. With public finances under real strain, the answer cannot simply be more money or asking staff to work harder. Frequent reorganisations, conflicting priorities, and a thicket of regulatory requirements are diverting precious time and resources away from patient care. 'A step change in productivity is possible – but only if NHS leaders, staff, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Treasury align behind a shared ambition: delivering better health outcomes from the resources available.' Find out more ⬇️ https://bit.ly/4yOapCL

We’re at #LabourPartyConference this weekend discussing the public’s priorities for the NHS and social care with Ipsos in the UK, tackling the NEETs crisis with the Resolution Foundation and harnessing devolution to improve health with the Health Devolution Commission. Come and join us ⬇️

🗓️ 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗛𝗦 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲? Many countries are facing long-term trends and sustained pressures similar to those facing the NHS. In response, policymakers across Europe and elsewhere are implementing a range of reforms to their health systems to improve and redesign care, stabilise services, drive greater efficiency and control costs. On 26 November, join us to hear more about these policy responses, and to discuss what lessons they hold for policy and practice in England. 🕙 10.00–17.00 📍 IET London, Savoy Place, WC2R 0BL Register to join us ⬇️

This morning The Health Foundation has published the final report from its Productivity Commission. https://lnkd.in/ejPXGTSf I’ve been feeding in to this work on behalf of National Voices so here are a few reflections: 1. I’ll be honest, I was nervous at the beginning. Conversations about productivity aren’t always welcomed in the NHS, often being felt as an ask to simply do more with less. But the Commission right from the first meeting understood the need to get across this is not simply about delivering more activity or reducing costs. Productivity is about “achieving better health outcomes and patient experience with the resources available, and continually finding better ways to deliver care.” 2. One of the big issues the Commission found was “priority overload”. System leaders are simply pulled in too many different directions. To help fix this the Commission calls for local systems and providers to have power over the “how”, with national players putting greater emphasis on outcome and experience measures as how they measure productivity - echoing aspirations that were set out in the NHS 10 Year Plan and the National Quality Strategy. Here is the actual recommendation. “DHSC should extend and improve outcomes measurement so that performance can be better assessed across the NHS. There should be greater weight nationally and locally on outcomes and patient experience, with DHSC supporting tools for consistent and comprehensive recording of high-quality data. Systems, providers and boards should have more scope to use these data to guide improvement and resource allocation. Reporting needs to be transparent so the public can understand performance. The NHS in England should also participate in OECD’s PaRIS programme to enable international benchmarking.” Sorting that out is going to be a big job, but I do feel the energy, political momentum and sense of positivity around this which I’ve not felt before. 3. This line stood out for me. “Patients experience pathways as a whole and can identify gaps that are invisible from within individual teams or organisations.” This is so true, and why lived experience and a route for patients to have an independent voice in the system is so crucial. As part of the commission we put forward an idea for creating “Patient Productivity Partners”, people who are experienced users of the NHS that can help the system spot (and work through solutions for) the very real problems that create productivity barriers at the moment. This would have the added benefit of rebuilding patient and public confidence, and showing that the NHS is a listening organisation that cares about feedback. If you have 10 minds over coffee today it’s definitely worth a read of this one. And a big thank you to National Voices Lived Experience Partners for your contributions to the Commission. I hope you see the difference it made.

Prevention is often discussed in terms of policy ambition and national plans. Our new report asks a different question: what does prevention look like from the perspective of the people trying to make it happen? As part of SHERU's, wider programme exploring how socio-economic policies can contribute to reducing health inequalities, this new report builds on our earlier analysis of Scotland's housing and employability strategies, examining how these ambitions are experienced in local implementation spaces. Drawing on six Action Learning Sets involving practitioners, managers and leaders across housing, health, employability, justice, local government and the third sector, the report offers a unique insight into the realities of translating preventative aspirations into practice across policy areas, systems and services. Rather than evaluating individual organisations or initiatives, this work acts as a metaphorical mirror, highlighting the valuable implementation intelligence held within local systems and the importance of creating space for reflection, learning and adaptation across services to surface critical policy insights that can support implementation. People are navigating complex systems in Scotland. Our key takeaway is that, if Scotland is serious about taking the kind of preventative approach Christie envisioned, we need to focus much more on understanding the conditions that enable ambitious policies to succeed in practice.  Implementation capacity and contexts need to be recognised and designed into policy from the outset and this requires Scottish Government to move away from top-down policy design towards co-designing policies and implementation plans with the local areas, front line practitioners and the communities who most frequently use key public services. Thank you to everyone who contributed their time, expertise and insight and to Community Renewal Trust for their support with this work.  https://lnkd.in/esaf5s4c #Prevention #HealthInequalities #SystemsChange #Implementation #PublicServices #ActionLearning #PartnershipWorking #SHERU 

The latest Keep Britain working update sets out clearly the case for seeing health as an economic asset, using The Health Foundation analysis that shows returning working-age health to levels of a decade ago could provide a £57bn boost to the economy and £72bn boost to the public finances. Its great to see how involved Vanguard employers are and a recognition that employers have a crucial role in acting earlier when health starts to affect their employees’ ability to work, but government must create a wider system to support this approach. This includes expanding workplace health provision to help people stay in or return to work, while improving financial support for people trying to get back into employment, including through higher statutory sick pay. https://lnkd.in/enReTCGK