The Health Foundation has launched an exciting new £2.6m programme for partnerships developing collaborative communities where people, families, health care professionals and researchers work together to improve health care.
The Common Ambition programme will support four ambitious teams across the UK to work towards a shared aim: to build sustainable change across health care through collaboration between those who use services and those who deliver them.
About the programme
The Common Ambition programme supports improvements to health care services which are driven by members of the public working collaboratively with health care professionals.
The programme launched in spring 2020, when we invited partnerships between the voluntary and community sector, such as charities and social enterprises, and the NHS to apply for funding.
From 361 applications, we selected four ambitious teams across the UK. Each team has received between £400,000 and £500,000 for projects that will run for two to three years from early 2021.
The projects focus on four very different areas of health care: improving health services for homeless people; reducing HIV health inequalities; putting people with inflammatory bowel disease in control of their care; and redesigning services for people with learning disabilities or autism.
All four teams will aim to build sustainable change in health care through collaboration between those who use services and those who deliver them.
We believe voluntary and community sector organisations are vital to this type of collaboration, because of their ability to harness the knowledge and skills in the community. The partnerships also include universities, commissioning organisations and local authorities, and will ensure that learning is captured and impact measured.
The Health Foundation is working with National Voices and Rubis-QI to support the four projects, and we have commissioned SQW to provide an independent evaluation of the programme. This evaluation will capture shared learning from the partnerships, as well as an understanding of how successful the programme has been in achieving its aims.
If you are interested in hearing more about our work in this area, please get in touch on commonambition@health.org.uk