Blog

Loreen Chikwira explores how better listening, collaborative working with minority ethnic women and better support for link workers can improve how social prescribing supports migrant women.

Now the Health and Care Act has been passed, Richard Murray reflects on the negotiations that went down to the wire, what didn’t make it and what’s needed to ensure the reforms are successful.

Social prescribing link workers are on the front line of the fight for population health. They know it, but need more support to deliver on the promise of their roles, as Laura Lamming explores.

Oliver Standing, Director of Collective Voice, and colleagues from the Alliance Group, explore the opportunities offered by England’s new drugs strategy, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.

In a recent roundtable, local health leaders identified five relationships that need to be strengthened to successfully manage elective backlogs.

Integrated care systems are intended to be part of a new way of working in health and care based on principles of partnership and collective responsibility. Chris Naylor asks whether this original vision is already at risk and what making a reality of it would involve.

The Healthy communities together programme was set up by The King's Fund and The National Lottery Community Fund in 2019 and supports local partnership working to improve the health and wellbeing of local communities. Helen Gilburt and the Healthy communities together team reflect on the learning from the programme so far.

The Covid-19 vaccination programme was one of the few largely unqualified successes of the pandemic response. Nicholas Timmins summarises the findings of a new report on what made the roll-out work, and what can be learnt for the future.

Johnson Neo reflects on the role that clinicians can play in improving population health and considers how applying a framework can help make sense of the factors that can impact on their patients’ health.

David Buck and Toby Lewis consider the opportunities of NHS England’s new ‘Core20plus5’ approach to tackling health inequalities, and reflect on how the NHS begins to adapt its role and work more strongly with others to tackle the root causes as well as symptoms.

Partnership working can be transformative – if it works well. Here we share two techniques, observed as part of the Healthy Communities Together programme, that can help in forming healthy partnerships.

Angela Fell, Director of Northern Heart and Soul in Wigan, outlines why we should move beyond person-centred services to a community-centred approach in order to transform people's health and wellbeing.

Listening to people and learning from their experiences offers the opportunity to change care for the better. Imelda Redmond, National Director of Healthwatch England, explains why involving users will give a better, bigger picture of how integration is working.

Dame Carol Black’s review has produced a comprehensive set of recommendations for action on drugs prevention, treatment and recovery. Ruth Robertson reflects on the wide range of services that need to be involved.

How could patients, service users and the wider public benefit from the government’s proposed health reforms? Chris Naylor explains why there needs to be a clearer answer to that question.

Nicholas Timmins outlines why greater ministerial powers over the day-to-day running of the NHS proposed in the Health and Care Bill might not work for the service or for ministers.

The new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has arrived at a time of change. Sally Warren looks at the decisions he will need to take around the Covid-19 pandemic, the Health and Social Care Bill, public health and social care reform.

To make the most of the opportunities offered by integrated care systems and local place-based working, partnership-working needs to be about more than just relationships between organisations. Now is the time to embrace community power and strengthen community engagement and involvement, says Chris Naylor.

With the upcoming health and care reforms a key focus of the Queen’s Speech, Sally Warren looks back on ‘the pause’ in the 2011 Health and Social Care Bill, and asks what lessons are there for the forthcoming Health and Care Bill?

As Sir Simon Stevens announces his departure, Nicholas Timmins looks back at his time as Chief Executive of the NHS and the legacy he leaves.