Integrated neighbourhood working

Building healthier communities through community-led approaches to health and wellbeing.

The NHS Confederation and Local Trust have joined forces to promote and test community-led approaches to health and wellbeing in some of England’s most deprived neighbourhoods.

Working together, we will broker practical partnerships between Big Local areas (150 communities across England), NHS partners and others with a stake in improving the health and wellbeing of people and places.

We will:

build a community of local leaders, sharing learning and driving change
find and share new evidence on the conditions for successful integrated approaches
influence and inform systemic changes to health and care at a national and system level.

In responding to worsening population health and widening health inequalities, it is crucial to create healthy places to live where people can lead good lives.
Creating the conditions that enable this – through genuine partnerships that centre on community leadership in healthcare at a hyperlocal level – is essential. This approach allows personalised care based on people’s needs, close to where they live as the norm. Through collaboration and the joining of community and health and social care services, it becomes possible to provide effective care, build powerful preventative capacity and achieve joined up approaches across sectors – leading to better management of chronic conditions, reduced hospital admissions and improved overall health and wellbeing.
Fostering collaboration close to home across health and care services promotes knowledge sharing, joint problem-solving and innovation, which can lead to improved service delivery, staff wellbeing/retention and create opportunities for new models of care that better meet the needs of the population.

Submit a tender to our research project

We are tendering for an organisation or group of organisations to deliver a twelve to eighteen month action research project exploring community-led, hyper-local approaches to a neighbourhood health service. The project will focus on building the partnerships between local communities and NHS leaders and providers. Alongside the delivery, we are also tendering for a partner to deliver the evaluation and learning support .

Deadline for submissions is Friday 28 February 2025. Tenders should be submitted by email to charlotte.ruthven@nhsconfed.org and holly.walters@nhsconfed.org, copying in contracting@nhsconfed.org.

Our programme’s central aim is to improve population health and reduce inequalities through joined up, community-led approaches.

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