Topic: Person-centred care

The Health Foundation believes that to improve the quality of care for individuals we need to transform the dynamics that shape the way care systems work – and challenge the beliefs and behaviours of both those who use them and those who provide them.

To achieve this transformation, many factors – from clinicians and managers to services and systems – need siginificant change, with a shift in philosophies, cultures and behaviours. These changes must happen across three relationships: between communities and the wider care system, between the individual and the wider care system, and between the individual and their clinicians.

Our Co-creating Health programme is testing a new way of supporting people with long-term conditions to self-manage, and through our Shared Decision Making programme we are designing and testing interventions for successfully implementating shared decision making.

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Case studies

  • Co-creation in Ayrshire and Arran

    NHS Ayrshire and Arran is one of eight sites involved in Co-creating Health, the Health Foundation initiative testing a new model of care that hopes to change the patient-clinician relationship to one of partnership and co-creation. The initiative works across the system to embed self-management support for people with long-term conditions.

  • Reducing maternal death rates in Malawi

    Malawi has one of the world's highest death rates during childbirth. In March 2006, The Health Foundation launched a three year programme dedicated to improving the quality of healthcare for mothers and babies in Malawi.

  • Improving healthcare for BME groups in Birmingham

    Across the UK, black and minority ethnic (BME) groups experience more poor health, premature deaths and chronic ill-health than the rest of the population. Angela Knight Jackson is working on a project that aims to improve healthcare for BME groups in Birmingham.

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Publications

  • Commissioning with the Community

    Commissioning with the Community describes an exciting and effective approach to priority setting that has been developed and tested to help commissioners make robust decisions with the support of their community.

  • Co-creating Health

    This briefing paper describes The Health Foundation's Co-creating Health initiaitve and outlines the need for an effective integrated approach to self-management support. It also includes early experiences from the Co-creating Health teams.

  • Patient-focused interventions: A review of the evidence

    Patient-focused interventions are those that recognise the role of patients as active participants in the process of securing appropriate, effective, safe and responsive healthcare. This report aims to provide a concise and comprehensive overview of the evidence base.

Current activities

  • Co-creating Health

    Studies have shown that supporting self-management can lead to dramatically improved outcomes for patients. Despite this, it remains at the periphery of most health services. This self-management initiative aims to transform healthcare for people with long-term conditions.

  • MaiKhanda

    In March 2006, The Health Foundation launched a £2.7 million, six-year programme dedicated to improving the quality of healthcare for babies and mothers in Malawi.

  • Shine

    Shine is the Health Foundation's new annual award for smart thinking health professionals to test innovative interventions that deliver high quality care.

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Features

  • Self-management: co-creating health

    Clinicians are changing the way they work with patients and acknowledging that it is a partnership, says Natalie Grazin in the HSJ

  • Partners in Care

    The Prime Minister’s recent speech on the NHS marked a clear shift in the Government’s attitude to the role of patients in their healthcare. If delivered, this would not only change our health services unrecognisably – it would improve the lives of millions of people.

  • Creating health in everyday life

    In recent years there has been great interest supported self-management for people with long-term conditions. Harry Cayton, National Director for Patients and the Public, at the Department of Health, discusses patient engagement.

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