Professor Judith Smith, our new Chair of HSR UK reflects on HSR UK's past, presence and future directions for our charity.
I am delighted and privileged to have been elected by the Board of HSR UK as Chair of Trustees. I have a hard act to follow in Kieran Walshe, who skilfully and thoughtfully steered HSR UK to charitable status and then of course through the pandemic. The current strength and influence of HSR UK are in no small part due to Kieran’s hard work and leadership.
Taking on the role of Chair has got me thinking. I can distinctly remember, in around 2002, being at a round table discussion at the Nuffield Trust, convened by Nuffield and the Health Foundation to explore how health services research might become more impactful in the UK. This was a time of increasing focus on the need for high quality and accessible research evidence to inform decisions about how health services could best be delivered and organised. The meeting included policy makers, senior NHS managers, academics, colleagues from think tanks, and the NHS Confederation.
It was from that initial meeting, and drawing on a study undertaken for the Health Foundation and Nuffield Trust by Dr Penny Dash, that the idea for a ‘health services research academy’ was born, and indeed that Health Services Research UK was established as the Health Services Research Network.
The early 2000s were a fascinating and energising time for health services research. The (now) National Institute of Health and Care Research had recently established its Service Delivery and Organisation Research Funding programme (now the Health and Social Care Delivery Research Programme). The Blair Government was implementing far-reaching NHS reforms underpinned by record levels of investment to tackle deep-seated problems including very long waiting lists and times. Alongside this, researchers of various disciplines were increasingly coalescing as a ‘health services research’ community, inspired in part by the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation and their focus on producing accessible research and evidence summaries, and working closely with policy makers and health leaders to shape research priorities and plans.
As I look back to 2002, there are some striking similarities with 2024. We are in a time of very profound challenges for our health and care services, a result of over a decade of financial austerity, a global pandemic and with severe workforce shortages. We have an abundance of opportunities for research funding, particularly from NIHR with its HSDR programme, Policy Research Programme, Research for Patient Benefit, and the new Research Programme for Social Care. There are also exciting funding opportunities available from the Health Foundation, ESRC and others. And we have a new UK government with policy proposals to address these short- and longer-term deep-seated service problems.
So what role will HSR UK need to play in bringing research evidence to bear this exciting and yet daunting period? First, an important priority for the HSR UK board is to ensure that we are able to support earlier career researchers in gaining experience, training and support to progress at different stages of their careers. And we mean by this people of any age who make the shift into health services research, including those who have worked in health practitioner or management roles, and in other sectors, as well as those pursuing more traditional academic routes. Examples of our work in this area include, our HSR UK mentoring programme, a three-year project supported by the Health Foundation that focuses on how to ensure a more inclusive health services research workforce and careers, work to explore the potential of apprenticeship programmes for social research and a special evening event for earlier career researchers at our 2024 Annual conference.
Second, we continue to progress one of the initial aims of HSRUK from 2002, exploring how health services research can inform and shape the decisions that are made within local services, at board level in provider and commissioning organisations, and in national policy. Examples of current HSR UK work include a new report on ‘research-savvy’ NHS boards, a workforce research network which, following a 2-day symposium in 2023 for managers, HR professionals, academics and policy makers, has produced a report and papers and is working closely with the Shelford Group to determine an ongoing programme of webinars aimed at supporting and disseminating this vitally important area of research.
Third, we will continue with our core mission to network and support the community of health and social care researchers across the UK. Our annual conference will remain a central focus for this, in Oxford in 2024 and Newcastle in 2025, as will our Heads of Research Centres group. We are developing plans for other webinars and workshops throughout the year, some on-line and some held in different regions. Do let us know if you have ideas for topics, research methods, or broader skills such as using research to influence policy makers.
The 2003 report that led to the founding of HSR UK concluded as follows:
Improving health services research (in whatever definition) has the capacity to substantially improve health care services, improvements which would be for the benefit of users, providers and governments.
I think that this is as true now as it was then. We are fundamentally concerned with how best to support an ever more inclusive and diverse community of health services researchers, find ways to bring researchers and decision makers closer together, and provide vital networks and support for all those undertaking organisational and delivery research in a hugely pressured health and care sector. Do let us know your ideas for how best we might do this, by contacting us on [email protected].