Centre for Organising Health and Care Research

At the Centre for Health and Care Research, our primary focus is on improving healthcare at scale by addressing the systemic challenges facing the sector today.

Healthcare is not just experiencing a resource shortage; it also has a management problem that requires innovative solutions and urgent transformation. Leveraging our extensive knowledge and expertise, we are dedicated to developing cutting-edge research that drives forward innovations, leading debates and deepens our understanding of the practice of health and care research.

WBS has a long history of being at the forefront of healthcare policy and practice in the UK. In 1992, Andrew Pettigrew, Ewan Ferlie and Lorna McKee published ‘Shaping Strategic Change’, which set out revolutionary ideas for transforming healthcare services. This work was integrated into hundreds of strategies and initiatives led by healthcare practitioners and policymakers.

More than 30 years later, health and care research continue to thrive at WBS through the Centre for Health and Care Research. The Centre collaborates closely with Warwick Medical School and multiple local partners in the NHS, and is also playing a central role in the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) West Midlands, a five-year initiative to improve care services across the West Midlands.

The aims of the Health and Care Research Centre fall into three key categories:

Thought leadership and visibility

• Build and promote knowledge that inspires new thinking and new practices
• Continually develop WBS as a centre of excellence in applied research on health and care.

Community building

• Connect researchers, practitioners, policy makers, thought leaders and institutions to collaborate at a local, regional, national and global level
• Champion an interdisciplinary research community for health and care within WBS and the University of Warwick.

Impact

• Create a world-leading capability in demonstrating the applied use, reach and significance of research that makes a difference in health and care. Evidence outcomes and build methodologies to help findings to be applied by practitioners and policy makers.