Funded by Nesta and The Dunhill Medical Trust, the programme offered tailored funding, movement-building support and collaboration with other campaigners in health and care.

We believe that the future of health and care should be people-powered: a future that is for people, by people and with people. There is untapped potential to combine the energy and dynamism of social movements with the need for radical institutional change. This creative tension between people and institutions lies at the heart of our work on People Powered Health. We had previously researched Social Movements in Health and published two papers. This programme was an opportunity to explore further how funders could ally with social movements and support their activity.

We ran an open application process and received 200 applications - these were shortlisted and a final cohort of seven social movements were selected. From April 2019-March 2020 we worked with them offering training, coaching, development opportunities and funding to each movement. A key part of the programme was a series of whole cohort events for the movements to come together and learn from each other about tactics, movement building, sustainability and self care.

We are gathering together learning from the programme and also learning from the social movements about how COVID-19 has impacted their activity. We will be sharing this learning over the coming months.