About the programme

People Powered Health is a programme from NESTA, working with the Innovation Unit, to support the design and delivery of innovative services for people that are living with long term health conditions

The Call

In early June 2011 we published a call for ideas open to partnerships made up of producers and consumers of services for people with long term conditions. The call was looking for partnerships that had a track record of joint working and a shared vision of how coproduction would help them improve their services and change the lives of their patients and communities for the better. With a clear ambition for scale in mind, we wanted to support approaches that had the potential to deliver tangible results within the life of the programme and could be replicated and scaled.

The Response

We received 108 applications from a range of organisations across England which revealed an appetite for coproduction and a breadth and depth of practice that exceeded our expectations.

The portfolio of applications ranged from individual service solutions to city-wide pathway redesign. Proposed projects involved PCTs, GP practices, community service providers, local authorities, charities and social enterprises. The strength and credibility of partnerships was a common feature to many of the applications, suggesting that, when driven by a shared goal, organisations are increasingly successful at working together across silos.

While applications covered a wide range of long term conditions, mental health and cardio pulmonary obstructive disease were the most represented. Many of the applications cut across conditions or addressed co-morbidity reflecting the "whole life" outlook that underpins coproduction approaches.

Geographically, applicants were split between the southern (50%) and northern (32%) English regions, with a smaller proportion (18%) in the Midlands and East of England. London was the region with the most applicants (38%).

In terms of co-production, the portfolio included a mix of peer support groups, timebanks, self management support, group consultations, narrative based assessments, service co-design, service navigators, motivational interviewing, innovative uses of personal budgets, social prescribing, staff and patient training and support and multi-purpose service centres. While only a small number of partnerships could demonstrate a strong and long-term track record of co-production, many were firmly on the way to establishing more equal and asset-based ways of working across organisations and with people and communities.

The picture emerging from the portfolio conveys a genuine desire to find solutions that give people more control over their lives and that recognise their experience and seek their contribution, including through peer support. Finding solutions that promote authentic reciprocity among patients, communities and health professionals appears to be more difficult, as is enabling professionals to move away from the traditional mode of delivering services to people and towards co-creating them with people.

Over the course of the programme we will be supporting these partnerships with grants of up to £100,000 each and up to 20 days of non financial support from leading experts in the fields of co-production, service design, economic modelling, health economics, change management, leadership, commissioning and procurement.

We will share the learning emerging from the programme with people and organisations who are interested in exploring, implementing or mainstreaming co-production in health and beyond.

Further information

To find out more about this programme please read the People Powered Health FAQs. Read more about NESTA's work on co-production.

If you have any further questions please contact Ajay Khandelwal on ajay.khandelwal@nesta.org.uk or on 020 7438 2500.