Impact Review 2024-25: Foreword

It is another year of huge change in our health and care system, with a new NHS 10-year plan, NHS England due to be absorbed into the Department for Health and Social Care, and changes mandated for local Integrated Care System functions and footprints.

In this time of uncertainty, we’re thankful that Bristol Health Partners remains a fixed point for innovation and collaboration in our region.

This was underscored in March, when our eleven partner organisations renewed their Collaboration Agreement for a further five years. We’re excited to continue our work together, including with our two acute trusts who now form the Bristol NHS Group (the third largest in the UK), and our Integrated Care Board, whose Research team consistently tops the table for most NIHR Research Capability Funding (£1.7M in 2024-25 and £1.9M in 2025-26).

The Agreement reflects our shared commitment to evidence-based decision-making that improves health and care, meaningfully and equitably, in our region and beyond. We’re pleased to report that we’re already made some excellent progress in the last year. For example, we:

• have come up with the first robust way to measure who is and isn’t involved in research. Our approach has been successfully trialled in Bristol and is now being validated nationally,
• led a successful campaign for a simple blood test to be made available on the NHS that will help reduce the risk of kidney failure in Black African-heritage kidney donors,
• are collaborating with London’s Kings Health Partners on national public health priorities, including on healthy weight.

And, with more than a dozen new Health Integration Team (HIT) co-directors joining us in the space of a year, it’s clear that there’s never been a better time to get involved.

They have the privilege of working alongside 50+ active public contributors, who offer fresh, honest and sometimes raw perspectives on how our health and care system needs to change to work for everyone, including some of the most marginalised people in our region. Read Chrissy and Carl’s insights on why they work with our HITs.

For more than a decade, Bristol Health Partners has been an effective platform to influence how health and care is planned, designed and delivered. We hope that in this year’s Impact Review you’ll find plenty of examples of the difference we’re making. We invite you to connect with us to join that change.