Sustainable Investment for Health & Well-being

The Social Value Database and Simulator (SVDS) for Public Health has been developed as part of a pioneering programme of work and a wider organisational and global drive towards increasing Value and Impact, applying a Social Value approach towards building a ‘Value-Based Public Health’ and a Well-being Economy in Wales and beyond. 

The SVDS is an innovative tool for the collation, storage and manipulation of health economics evidence, focusing on the Social Return on Investment (SROI) methodology and its application to public health.

We have taken the SVDS offline to review content and accessibility.

If you require any information or guidance in relation to the SVDS, please contact us on [email protected].

The Public Health Economics and Value Team at the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre on Investment for Health and Well-being (WHO CC) is progressing a pioneering programme of work, applying a Social Value approach towards building a ‘Value-Based Public Health’ and an Economy of Well-being in Wales.  

Our work aims to:

• Pioneer and promote the use of Social Value methods and tools across Public Health Wales, the NHS, and public bodies across the UK, as well as Public Health Institutes and health systems internationally to help capture the holistic (social, economic, and environmental) outcomes and impacts of public health. 

• Pilot and progress the application of Social Return on Investment (SROI) methodology to assess public health services and interventions.

• Utilise national and international best practice, experience and learning to develop a suite of resources to inform and support a Value-Based Public Health as part of Value-Based Health Care in Wales. 

• Help build a systems approach based on evidencing Social Value to strengthen the case for investing in population health and well-being and facilitate a balanced and sustainable finance shift towards primary prevention and early intervention. 

• Explore evidence and opportunities to develop further the concept, methodology and real-life application of Social Value and SROI to improve health and well-being and reduce health inequity in Wales and beyond. 

The WHO CC is creating a diverse and innovative portfolio of products and tools to support the case for sustainable, evidence and value-based investment in public health and health equity. 

You can learn more about our work from the Sustainable Investment in Population Health and Well-being: Towards a Value-Based Public Health brochure, which provides an outline of key concepts, examples of application, and a suit of resources to support colleagues, stakeholders, and partners to progress this agenda.

This work between Wales (Public Health Wales) and the WHO (the Venice Office) focuses on identifying and developing key innovative policies, solutions and approaches, with multiple well-being, social, economic and environmental co-benefits towards building an ‘Economy of Well-being’. 

This includes:

• Placing people and their well-being at the centre of the economy.

• Informing policy- and decision-making that enables people to reach their full potential and enjoy their fundamental rights.

• Showcasing the mutually reinforcing nature of population wellbeing, social progress and economic growth.

• Highlighting the importance of investing in effective, efficient and equitable policies, processes and structures that secure fair access to public services and well-being opportunities.

• Embedding social values, such as equity, inclusion, well-being and sustainability; and using social and economic return on investment, in the design and implementation of COVID-19 financial and social recovery packages.

• Strengthening and promoting Wales’s leading role, opening further collaborative global and Europe-wide research and business opportunities.

The Public Health Economics and Value Team have produced an easy-to-understand animation explaining the concept of the Well-being Economy. It showcases Wales’s shift towards a fairer, healthier, and more sustainable economy. Fostering a well-being approach in Wales will facilitate the acquisition of fair and healthy lives for all, through investments that produce human, social, environmental, and economic well-being capitals. This animation is part of a suite of developed and applied tools and approaches, promoting knowledge exchange between countries, to support learning and understanding, and generate well-being policies and investment for Wales and beyond. 

The main purpose of this programme is to estimate the cost of health inequality and evaluate the distributional cost-effectiveness of public health programmes in Wales. This programme aims to achieve the following objectives:

• To identify the use of social patterning across various health services within NHS Wales.

• To analyse health gaps and highlight the most influential determinants of health. 

• To estimate the cost of health inequality using secondary care data (hospital inpatient admissions, accident and emergency services, outpatient services), and primary care GP services data in Wales. 

• To evaluate the distributional cost-effectiveness of different public health programmes, including use of decision analytic modelling and simulation techniques.

Economic evaluation is a comparison of the costs and outcomes of healthcare interventions, which provides a measurement of economic efficiency. There are different types of economic evaluation, and the use of each method depends upon the economic question we are trying to answer. 

For example, cost-effectiveness analysis provides the cost to a health system for each unit of effectiveness it achieves measured in natural units (e.g., improvement in blood pressure or cholesterol level). In comparison, return on investment indicates how much financial gain a health system can obtain from each pound it invests in a quality improvement programme. This programme aims to achieve following objectives:

• To evaluate the cost-effectiveness and return on investment of different public health programmes in collaboration with programme lead across directorates within Public Health Wales and the wider NHS.

The evidence generated from health economics work supports decision making for the effective and justifiable (re-)allocation of health resources to different public health programmes within Public Health Wales.

In January 2024, the Public Health Economics and Value team at the WHO CC delivered an online masterclass on the concept and application of social value to enhance understanding and assessment of the broader holistic value of public health. This complements the work on Sustainable Investment for Health & Well-being.

The specific objectives of this masterclass were to:

• Promote the importance of capturing and measuring the wider value of public health.

• Enhance understanding of why value and social value are important by introducing the strategic and policy context in Wales and beyond.

• Showcase practical applications of how to capture the social value of public health interventions and services.

The masterclass also explored how to measure social value through the Social Return On Investment (SROI) framework. This methodology was contextualised by drawing on a primary study involving sexual health screening in an open prison setting in Wales; as well as examples from literature reviews of public health interventions along the life course; mental health; and physical activity and nutrition.

MASTERCLASS PRESENTATION VIDEO

LINK TO MASTERCLASS SLIDES Social Value Masterclass: Measuring the value of public health – Public Health Network Cymru