2019 annual report and financial statements

Our annual report shares highlights from our work in 2019 and sets out our plans for 2020. It also contains our financial statements for 2019.

During 2019, we continued to focus on ways to bring about better health and health care for people living in the UK. We awarded grants to improve health care, carried out research and analysis, invested in long-term change initiatives and enabled collaboration through our networks. We shared our insights, analysis and what we know works on the ground to inform effective policymaking and practice on the front line.

Some of our successes in 2019 included:

• publication of our Creating healthy lives report in September
• reaching the conclusion of our 2-year Young people’s future health inquiry
• agreeing to fund the new REAL Centre (Research and Economic Analysis for the Long term), to be launched in 2020
• identifying the factors that help NHS staff to make the most sustained improvements to care for patients – we published our conclusions in The improvement journey
• launching the Networked Data Lab where we will be working with networked analytical teams across the UK to deliver data driven insights on common problems in health care
• funding the latest round of our Advancing Applied Analytics grant programme to tackle real-world problems facing the health system.

We also continued to support the development of innovative solutions to challenges facing health and social care through our various funding programmes.

This annual report presents a selection of our activities and achievements during 2019. The report also acknowledges the unprecedented challenge to health and care services that COVID-19 presents, as we look to our plans for 2020.