Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what has been learnt so far from the Health and Growth Accelerators; when those pilot projects will be fully evaluated; and when that evaluation will be published.

The NHS Health and Growth Accelerators programme is testing a novel approach in which local National Health Service systems, such as the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB), the South Yorkshire ICB, and the North East North Cumbria ICB, are empowered and held accountable for the impact they have on people’s work status through early intervention and prevention. The programme is building evidence for the health system’s contribution to economic activity.

In 2025/26, the accelerators had an outcome target to reduce health-related economic inactivity equivalent to at least 4,250 people kept in or returned to work who otherwise would have been inactive due to their health while improving population health. Building on 2025/26, the programme will continue in 2026/27 to generate evidence on how investing in prevention can help people stay in work, a key part of the Government’s 10-Year Health Plan for England.

NHS England has commissioned an independent evaluation funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to be conducted by Rose NET team. Definitive evidence on whether accelerators have met their outcome target will come from the full evaluation, concluding in 2027. The evaluation will use an Office of National Statistics linked dataset for independent evaluation through the NIHR which will identify the precise impacts of health interventions on employment, earnings, benefit receipts, and demands on NHS services.

The 10-Year Health Plan commits to expanding the accelerator model to all ICBs if the first three ICBs can successfully demonstrate that investing in prevention generates fiscal savings and health improvements through increased workforce participation. The programme has established the NHS Work and Health Network with NHS Alliance, which provides a national forum for the scaling and spread for all ICBs to benefit from the learning of the accelerators.