Food & Health Alliance

Eight Equally Well Test Sites were established in Scotland in October 2008. They were intended to try out new ideas to redesign and refocus public services, with the aim of tackling health inequalities.  This would allow lessons to be learned about how health inequalities can be reduced; better health and other outcomes can be achieved for service users; and greater efficiency in the use of public resources can be delivered.

In February 2010 NHS Health Scotland commissioned a national evaluation of the Test Sites. It focused on their service redesign and what worked when embedding change in the public sector to address health inequalities. The fieldwork was completed in March 2011, covering the first 30 months of the work of the Test Sites. In addition, each Site undertook a local evaluation, focusing on what Test Sites had done and what short term changes they had delivered.

The national evaluation considered:

• What was different about this approach?
• How had partnership work developed?
• How had learning taken place?
• What steps were being taken to sustain integrated service redesign?
• What were the most significant things achieved?
• What national level actions are needed?

Please find the full evaluation PDF file below this article.  Alternatively you can go to Health Scotland's document link.