Alongside high-tech advances, we need long-term, values-led innovation in community-powered health approaches to tackle health inequalities and ease pressure on services, writes Mark Swift, LPIP Hub Place Fellow with colleagues Tanuka Palit, Henk Parmentier, Liam Spence and James Smith.
A Broader View of Innovation
Health innovation in the UK is flourishing. Advances in AI, digital diagnostics, robotics and genomics are rightly celebrated for their potential to transform care. The Fit for the Future 10-Year Health Plan for England1 reflects this, prioritising five “Big Bets” – data, AI, genomics, wearables and robotics – alongside investments in modernising infrastructure and streamlining data-sharing.
Yet innovation is not only about technology; it’s also about people and place. The Plan nods to social prescribing in its neighbourhood health model2 but gives limited attention to wider community-powered health approaches – such as peer support, volunteering, and self-help – that can strengthen health equity from the ground up.
This is why we argue for values-led innovation – an approach that widens the lens beyond technology to ask whether innovations advance equity, participation, trust, and wellbeing. Values-led innovation puts people and places at the centre of progress, ensuring that breakthroughs in technology are matched by breakthroughs in how communities shape and benefit from change.
If we focus only on high-tech advances, we miss wider innovations needed to tackle health inequalities.3 If we are to truly transform outcomes and ease pressure on services, our definition of innovation must expand – and so must our understanding of where it comes from.
From the Margins to the Mainstream: Community-Powered Health
Alongside high-tech advances, an equally vital strand of innovation is rooted in relationships, trust, and place. We use the term ‘community-powered health’ to describe approaches that recognise the social, economic, and environmental conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age as the principal drivers of population health – while clinical care, though essential, is not the primary driver.³
Across the UK, community-powered health approaches take different forms. Some are designed and delivered with citizens by voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations and public sector teams, reflecting ambitions around prevention, personalisation and integration. Others are initiated and led by citizens, grounded in local priorities and community leadership. Yet despite this breadth, these approaches remain under-represented in national policy and research agendas.
In practice, community-powered health most often takes two forms:
- Community-centred health approaches – strategies that place citizens at the heart of improving health, reducing inequalities, and enhancing wellbeing. Delivered with citizens by VCSE organisations and public sector teams, they emphasise participation, empowerment, and social connection. The term gained prominence in the 2010s, particularly through Public Health England’s 2015 framework,4,5 though the practice can be traced back to the community development projects of the 1960s and 70s, and later initiatives such as Healthy Cities.6
- Community-led health approaches – initiated and driven by citizens, anchored in local priorities and operating with greater autonomy. Their lineage stretches from nineteenth-century friendly societies and mutual aid to late-twentieth-century grassroots health movements – from community responses to HIV/AIDS to campaigns for women’s health, mental health rights, and environmental justice.
Together, these strands place trust, empowerment and lived experience at the centre of better health. This is not aspirational or theoretical; it is already unfolding in communities across the country.
What It Looks Like in Practice
A powerful example of community-centred health innovation is Wellbeing Enterprises CIC’s ‘We Connect’ social prescribing initiative. Fully integrated with all GP practices in Halton in the Liverpool City Region, it supports people to overcome challenges, connect with local assets, and build the confidence to live well. A recent independent evaluation7 found strong health outcomes and exceptional value for money – with annualised returns of between £14.74 – £23.58 for every £1 invested.
Other standout models include:
- The Frome Model8 in Somerset, where the Compassionate Communities programme has been associated with reductions in emergency hospital admissions by strengthening local support networks.
- The ARC East of England’s volunteer-led palliative care model,9, which strengthens community capacity by training and supporting local people to provide compassionate end-of-life care.
Equally important are community-led innovations rooted in lived experience and citizen action. These range from self-help groups and food clubs to mutual aid networks and social enterprises such as community-run gyms or mental health cafés. The citizen-led recovery after the Grenfell Tower fire illustrates this vividly. Bereaved families, survivors and neighbours – through Grenfell United10 and local initiatives – mobilised trust, created culturally grounded wellbeing responses, and influenced debates on housing, justice and wellbeing.
These examples show community-powered health in practice – and new initiatives are now carrying these principles into research and innovation.
Promising Signs of Change
While community-powered health approaches are often undervalued in the national innovation conversation, there are signs of change. We are increasingly seeing innovations that combine digital, clinical, and academic expertise with community-powered insight.
Citizen First LCR,11 delivered by Public Life and backed by the Civic Health Tech Innovation Zone (CHI-Zone) at the University of Liverpool, supports grassroots innovators with seed funding, mentorship, and a real living wage. By selecting participants for lived experience rather than credentials, it reflects the spirit of community-led approaches – prioritising local knowledge, trust, and citizen leadership – while also creating new bridges into academic and digital innovation. This shows how universities can back values-led innovation that embraces data and AI without losing sight of equity and participation.
In Halton, partners led by Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (WHH) have established a local research network, the Halton Care Research Alliance (HCRA), to widen patient participation in research – working with VCSE organisations to enable access to studies through trusted community routes. This reflects a community-centred health approach, ensuring patients are supported to participate in research closer to home.
Together, these initiatives show what becomes possible when we dissolve traditional boundaries between research, practice, and community. Resourcing collaboration at the local level unlocks new possibilities – yet such work still sits at the margins of a system that too often sidelines community-powered health solutions.
Whether centred in partnership with public services or led directly by citizens, community-powered health approaches have demonstrated real impact across the UK. The task now is to ensure they are fully recognised, properly resourced, and embedded as core elements of health innovation.
Scaling What Matters: What Needs to Change
The NHS Fit for the Future plan is ambitious and rightly highlights the transformative potential of digital, AI, and genomic innovations. Yet, on its own, this focus risks reinforcing a narrow view of progress. To truly be “fit for the future”, national strategies must take a more balanced approach that embeds community-powered health within their vision of innovation. The shifts we outline below are not in competition with the Plan’s Big Bets, but necessary complements to them. They offer practical ways to broaden the agenda and ensure that innovation works for everyone.
Turning promising successes into systemic change requires three big shifts:
1. Expand our definition of health innovation.
Innovation must mean not only technologies and treatments, but also community practices, civic action, and peer-led solutions. These are not ‘nice-to-haves’ but essential infrastructure for prevention, early intervention, and tackling inequalities.
2. Reform how we fund and commission community-powered health approaches.
Short-term, competitive contracts stifle creativity. This requires a shift away from short-termism in commissioning and towards patient, long-term investment. What is needed is outcome-focused funding – five years or more – that gives VCSE organisations the stability to grow and attract wider investment. Public spending can be more than a service transaction; it can act as an anchor, drawing in social investment¹² to amplify impact.
Anchor institutions such as local authorities and their public health teams, alongside Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), have a key role in this shift. By aligning public, private, and civic resources around shared missions, they can create a virtuous cycle: stable core contracts unlock investment, investment strengthens prevention, and prevention reduces demand on services.
3. Embed community-powered health innovations in R&D systems.
If health innovation is to be genuinely transformative, stronger links are needed between community-powered health approaches and the UK’s research and development ecosystem. This means opening up pathways for VCSE organisations, public sector teams, and citizen innovators to collaborate with national research funders, innovation networks, and life sciences partnerships.
In practice, this could involve dedicated funding streams for community-led and community-centred research, partnership-broker roles to connect researchers with local organisations, and capacity-building support to help VCSEs navigate complex research processes. Making these relationships more deliberate, inclusive, and sustained will ensure innovation is not only scientifically robust but also equitable, practical, and grounded in real-world knowledge and experience.
The Moment for Change
There is growing momentum behind this shift. The World Health Organization’s 2025 report on the social determinants of health13 urges countries to “strengthen the role of local government with the functions and resources to implement community-centred actions for health equity.”
This call resonates with the national focus on neighbourhood health in the NHS, where new pilots are testing integrated, place-based models. To succeed, these must include community-powered health approaches that tackle the social determinants of health from the ground up.
Community-powered health approaches are not a niche idea. They are a necessary rebalancing of how we think about progress – one that values people as co-creators, not just users of the system. By investing in these innovations – and in the research and infrastructure that enable them to grow – we can build a future where innovation is equitable, sustainable, and community-driven.
Commissioners, funders, and research bodies must now act decisively, backing this shift with long-term, values-led investment. The choice is simple: continue with narrow fixes, or unlock the potential of communities to drive lasting change. If we want health innovation to be both cutting-edge and deeply human, we must put communities at the heart of progress – because communities hold the key, and it is time innovation unlocked the door.
References
- Department of Health and Social Care. 2025. Fit for the Future: 10-Year Health Plan for England. London: Department of Health and Social Care.
- NHS England. 2025. “Neighbourhood Health Guidelines 2025/26.” London: NHS England. Published January 29, 2025; last updated March 25, 2025. Accessed: September 15, 2025.
- Marmot, Michael, Jessica Allen, Tammy Boyce, Peter Goldblatt, Joana Morrison. (2020). Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On. Institute of Health Equity and the Health Foundation. London: Health Foundation.
- South, Jane. 2015. A Guide to Community‑Centred Approaches for Health and Wellbeing: Full Report. London: Public Health England.
- South, Jane, Bagnall, Anne-Marie, Stansfield, Jude A, Southby, Kris J, Mehta, Pritti. 2019. “An evidence-based framework on community-centred approaches for health: England, UK.” Health Promotion International, 34, 2: 356-366,
- World Health Organization. 2020. Healthy Cities: Effective Approach to a Rapidly Changing World. Geneva: World Health Organization.
- Timpson, Hannah. 2025. WE Connect Social Return on Investment: Executive Summary. Halton: Wellbeing Enterprises CIC.
- Abel, Julian, Helen Kingston, Andrew Scally, Jenny Hartnoll, Gareth Hannam, Alexandra Thomson‑Moore, and Allan Kellehear. 2018. “Reducing Emergency Hospital Admissions: A Population Health Complex Intervention of an Enhanced Model of Primary Care and Compassionate Communities.” British Journal of General Practice 68 (676): 803-810.
- ARC East of England. 2024. “Developing Community Resources for Compassionate Care and Support.” NIHR ARC East of England News & Blogs.
- Grenfell United, Home. Grenfell United, accessed August 28, 2025.
- Public Life. “Citizen First LCR: Unlocking Our Hidden Entrepreneurs.” Public Life. Accessed August 28, 2025.
- Swift, Mark, and James Smith. 2025. Unlocking Social Investment for Health Equity in Liverpool City Region. Heseltine Institute Policy Briefings 3 (22). University of Liverpool, Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place.
- World Health Organization. 2025. World Report on Social Determinants of Health Equity. Geneva: World Health Organization.
This blog was written by Mark Swift, LPIP Hub Place Fellow, with colleagues Tanuka Palit, Henk Parmentier, Liam Spence and James Smith.
Find out more about the Local Policy Innovation Partnership Hub.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this analysis post are those of the author and not necessarily those of City-REDI or the University of Birmingham.