Generating evidence for NHS transformation
The NHS 10 Year Plan aims to transform England’s health service through three key shifts: moving care from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from treating sickness to preventing it in the first place. The 'fit for the future' plan, published in July 2025, is ambitious, and achieving its vision is made more complex at a time of tight government budgets.
We are in a key position to generate evidence on all three shifts. For example, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) teams are evaluating Pharmacy First, which aims to provide frontline treatment for a set of common illnesses through pharmacies, reducing the burden on an overstretched GP service. Early findings contributed to refinement of the incentives that participating pharmacies face. Meanwhile the Policy innovation and evaluation unit (PIRU) is studying community diagnostic centres which bring a range of tests closer to home and provide greater choice over where and how they are provided.
A number of studies are focused on prevention and digitisation including a PIRU assessment of workplace health checks aimed at identifying early heart disease, and research on the Adult Social Care Technology Fund to support social care providers to adopt digital technologies.
Cancer is now the leading cause of death in England, with waiting times rarely out of the news headlines. Our influential cancer services research group is seeking to generate knowledge to reduce waiting times and address disparities, for example through the TACTIC study to develop an online national cancer learning system to help reduce waiting times from diagnosis to treatment.
Fit for the future: 10 Year Plan for England sets out to tackle inequalities in health care access and outcomes by socioeconomic group, ethnicity and geography. But strengthening health services will only take us part way towards closing the gaps. Wider social and commercial influences are also important, including through the products we are sold, and this often requires confronting industries such as food, tobacco, and gambling. LSHTM researchers are taking on all these challenges, for example producing evidence to inform the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, demonstrating the negative effects of vaping on young people through links to subsequent tobacco use, and respiratory health conditions such as asthma.
Progressing the NHS plans will require relentless focus on the part of our decision-makers. Proposals being put forward by some think tanks to upturn the underlying funding model for the NHS, from a tax-based system to one based on competing social insurance plans for example, are an unnecessary distraction. We can’t wait any longer to address growing health needs.
- This article is adapted from a feature in LSHTM’s Improving Health Worldwide 2026 brochure: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/introducing/annual-report-financial-statements
If you enjoyed this article and would like to build a career in global health, we offer a range of MSc programmes covering health and data, infectious and tropical diseases, population health, and public health and policy.
Available on campus or online, including flexible study that works around your work and home life, be part of a global community at the UK's no.1 public health university.