2022: The year in review

Blog
Written By Tim Brazier

Happy New Year! Just like that, 2022 is now done and we start 2023 full of hope and energy.

But before we look at what is to come, let’s have a look back at the last 12 months.

A look back at the last year

2022 was another tough year for so many. At Thrive by Design we’re constantly working to make sure that our work is grounded in the current context so if we are to look back at last year, we need to acknowledge the environment we’re operating in.

Last year was seen as the year that the Covid recovery really kicked into action and we have seen great work happening to build on the many lessons learned during the pandemic. But that has had to happen with the backdrop of unprecedented change and emerging crises.

We’ve seen some big changes in the way the NHS is structured. At the beginning of the year we saw NHSX merge to become part of NHS England’s Transformation Directorate. In July we saw the formalisation of Integrated Care Systems (ICS) and the disappearance of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). And by the end of the year we could see the plans for NHS Digital to merge with NHS England.

They are three pretty huge changes. When you add those to the political changes of 3 different Prime Ministers and 4 Secretary of States, it becomes easier to understand just how uncomfortable the last year has felt for many working in and around the NHS.

And then there were the changes at Thrive by Design. In April, the incredible Roz Davies stepped down as Managing Director and I stepped into the role. Since then we’ve added Steph, Ali, Gabby, Zoe and Faryal to the team and said goodbye to Tiarnan, Fran and Rob.

Working in such a changing environment is hard and that’s before we start to add in the ever growing list of crises that are affecting the health and care of everyone in the country.

  • An energy crisis

  • A cost of living crisis

  • A national workforce crisis

  • A global climate crisis

  • Industrial action on a scale we’ve never seen in the NHS (as well as other sector strikes).

And those are just the ones that are making headlines.  We know there are many more, not least the major mental health crisis, that is being exacerbated by all of this.

All of this means that inequality and inequity is growing by the day. Which makes our mission as critical as it ever has been.

What we’ve been working on

Over the last 12 months we’ve been able to build on our Inclusive Digital Transformation challenge continuing to work with our partners to:

We also established new partnerships to tackle health inequalities across different services and settings including:

  • Working with West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership on their Perinatal Mental Health and Neurodiversity co-production programmes.

  • Carrying out a discovery to develop a set of inclusive co-design principles for West Yorkshire.

  • Building a picture of Digital Exclusion across Cheshire & Merseyside with the ICS.

  • Working with the East of England Outpatient Transformation team to understand how remote consultations and self management works and identify ways to make them more inclusive and accessible.

  • Supporting the MyCare24 COPD team at Airedale Digital Care Hub to understand how they can make their service more inclusive and accessible.

And we’ve been honoured to be asked to contribute to some brilliant events and publications to raise the awareness and share our learning of taking a co-design approach to tackling health inequalities.  Some of our highlights were speaking about digital health inequalities at HETT and the Kings Fund Digital Congress, and being invited to sit alongside the brilliant Bola Owolabi on the Innovation Collaborative Podcast.

Looking forward to 2023

And we have no intention of stopping there. 2023 will be another busy and critical year in our bid to tackle inequality across health and care.

We’ll continue to build on our work to co-design inclusive and equitable access to health and care information and services but we also know we have other challenges ahead including:

  • Climate Change and Health Inequalities

  • Adapting our approaches to meet the needs of systems and services across health and care working in increasingly difficult circumstances.

  • Continuing to build our knowledge of emerging issues that will contribute to inequalities.

We know it’s not going to be straight forward but with our incredible team alongside our amazing expert associates, we know that we’re going to be able to overcome the challenges that come our way.

Work with us

If there is something you have read in this blog that you are interested in learning more about, or perhaps you are coming up against a related challenge that you need some support with, please do get in touch. We can help from the initial understanding of what the problems are that need to be addressed through to co-designing and co-producing solutions with you and the people who need to access your services.

But it all starts with an open conversation, so you can contact me at tim.brazier@nhs.net to arrange a chat.

Thank you

And finally, a huge thank you to everyone who has supported and partnered with us over the last year to help us continue to deliver our mission. A particular mention goes to Dawn Hanwell and the team at LYPFT for their unwavering support and all our commissioners and project teams for working with us so openly and collaboratively.

Happy 2023 – let’s make it a year where we can look back on the positive impact we have made to people’s health and care.

If you’d like to learn more about our team and the work we’re doing, you can check out Our Learning page or head over to FutureNHS where you can share your experiences, ask questions and discuss ideas with over 600 people all working to tackle inequality and inequity in access to health and care.

Tim Brazier
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