Population Health, Place, and Partnership: Why NHS Reform Aligns with Placemaking
Early signals emerging from the evolving structure of NHS Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) suggest a renewed and sharpened focus on population health management and addressing entrenched health inequalities. For those of us working in community-led development and placemaking, this is not only encouraging—it’s a call to action.
At All About The Place, our mission has always been to help communities unlock the potential of local assets—people, spaces, relationships, and data—to create healthier, more connected, and more resilient places. The direction of travel now emerging from within ICS reform aligns directly with this approach and presents a timely opportunity to reshape the way we plan, deliver, and measure health interventions in local contexts.
The Shift: From Service Delivery to Population Health
Traditionally, the NHS has operated within a reactive model, delivering services to individuals after health issues have arisen. The reforms now underway reflect a growing recognition that this model is unsustainable on its own. Instead, the emphasis is shifting toward prevention, integration, and addressing the broader determinants of health—such as housing, employment, education, and social connection.
Population health management (PHM) is a central component of this new approach. By using data and insights to identify needs and risks across defined populations, PHM supports the planning and delivery of interventions that are proactive, personalised, and place-based. This dovetails perfectly with the kind of community intelligence and real-time insight that All About The Place is developing through our community informatics platform.
Health Inequalities: A Place-Based Challenge
One of the most persistent and pernicious challenges facing ICSs is health inequality—where life expectancy and health outcomes vary dramatically between neighbouring communities. This is not just a healthcare problem. It is a problem of place, characterised by underinvestment, poor housing, limited opportunities, and fractured community infrastructure.
ICSs are increasingly recognising that meaningful progress on this front can only come through genuine collaboration with the voluntary, community, and social enterprise (VCSE) sector and with residents themselves. Our work supports this shift by helping ICS partners and local authorities access and interpret data at hyper-local levels, map local assets, and build trusted partnerships for delivery.
The Role of All About The Place
As a not-for-profit dedicated to supporting place-based transformation, All About The Place offers a suite of enabling services, including digital community insight platforms, social value measurement tools, facilitation of cross-sector partnerships, and systems mapping. We don’t deliver services—we help others do so more effectively by grounding decisions in local knowledge and lived experience.
In this moment of reform, we see the opportunity for ICSs to move beyond siloed service provision and toward true place-based collaboration. This means resourcing local infrastructure, sharing power with communities, and reevaluating what constitutes evidence and expertise.
We’re excited to be part of this journey—and ready to support ICSs and their partners in making the most of it.