Implementing and evaluating whole system change to improve children’s care locally, nationally and internationally
Our mission is to implement and evaluate whole system change that improves the way children’s care is commissioned, delivered and experienced locally, nationally and internationally.
Our main activities include co-designing, delivering and evaluating innovative healthcare for our population of children and young people in North West London. We also evaluate integrated child health initiatives, train health professionals in integrated care and provide coaching and facilitation to support the implementation of integrated child health. In addition, we provide strategic expertise to regional and national organisations.
The Integrated Care theme has established relationships with local GPs across a population of 250,000 patients. During the pandemic, Integrated Care collaborated with the Primary Care Clinical Research network for the first time. This was to enable researchers from Paediatric Allergy working with the Oxford Vaccine Group, to study vaccine responses in well children from diverse backgrounds, recruited through GP practices. As a result of this success, the collaboration will be developed to enable other research groups studying children and young people to recruit participants from local, healthy populations.
The Child Health GP Hub was developed by our team and is now adopted widely. It has been cited by The King’s Fund, National Voices, the House of Commons Health Committee, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Nuffield Trust, and Healthy London Partnership.
Connecting Care for Children (CC4C) is about partnerships with relevant stakeholders, including the voluntary sector and social care providers:
- Health Education England (North London)
- Imperial College Health care Trust
- WL/CL/H&F and Ealing CCGs
- London Boroughs of H&F, K&C and Westminster City Council
- Community and Maternity and Junior Champions
- Local family centres
- CLCH NHS Trust
- Health Foundation
- Behavioural insights team
- CLARHC
- Primary care networks
- WSIC
- NHS NWL
- Healthier Together, Wessex
- Belfast Health & Social Care Trust
Key research areas and theme leadership
Key research areas
- Evaluation of complex health systems
- Patients as significant and equal partners in health care – the role of co-production
- Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs)
- Using behavioural insights to support system change
- Population data and linked data sets
- Whole population segmentation
- Inter-professional Learning
- Transition from Paediatric to Adult Care
- Group Consultations
- The connection between mental and physical health
- Patient engagement through Simulation
- Use of quality improvement methods to drive change
Key design principles
- New approaches to care need to be co-designed with children, young people, parents, carers and communities
- Focus on outcomes that really matter to patients; this is essential if we are to tackle the health inequalities within our communities
- Focus on connections and relationships; NHS services can be minimally changed, while their capability and capacity are maximised
- Harness existing strengths: put GP practices at the heart of new care models - specialist services are drawn out of the hospital to provide support & to help connect services across all of health, social care and education
- Include the whole population, (using segmentation to create bundles of care) to drive prevention and improve equity
- Health seeking behaviours improve through peer-to-peer support
- Use education and development, for the whole multi-professional team, as a key way to build relationships and finding new ways to work together
Theme leads
Dr Mando Watson
Consultant Paediatrician
Mando Watson is a General Paediatrician at St Mary’s Hospital and Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College. Through the Connecting Care for Children programme in North West London she has developed holistic care and increased emphasis on prevention and the patient perspective. ‘Learning’ integrated care requires a focus on the patient perspective - Mando has developed the Programme for Integrated Child Health (PICH). This is the first such programme in the UK; the impact of which has been transformational for participating trainees. As past president of the Child Health section of the Royal Society of Medicine, Mando organised conferences that put patients and parents on the podium, recognising that paediatricians need to become better at collaborative decision-making with patients and parents.
Further information on Dr Watson
Dr Bob Klaber
Consultant general paediatrician and director of strategy, research and innovation
Bob Klaber is a General Paediatrician and Director of Strategy, Research and Innovation at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust who also trained as an educationalist alongside his postgraduate paediatric training in London. Bob has a strong interest in individual and systems learning & improvement, behavioural insights work and leadership development. Since 2015, Bob has been leading an ambitious project to create a culture of continuous quality improvement programme across Imperial which continues to evolve and develop in lots of exciting ways. Bob is the Executive Director at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust for the strategic development of our research portfolio, and in developing our approach to innovation. He is also an Hon Senior Lecturer within Imperial College.
Further information on Dr Klaber
Professor Mitch Blair
Professor of Paediatrics & Child Public Health
Mitch Blair is a paediatrician and Professor of Paediatrics and Child Public Health at Imperial College. He has a background in medical education, epidemiology and health services research. His primary research interests are in preventive child health programmes, international child health indicators and child health services research. His most recent research (BLUEPRINTS trial) is in developing a better understanding of unscheduled acute care in young children and exploring interventions which may reduce this.