Getting partnerships right: practical approaches to understanding and evaluating public health partnerships in London
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Authors
Rosie Rowe
Clare Bowerman
Patrycja Piotrowska
Molly Bolding
Contact
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Issue Date
06-May-26
Type
Conference Abstract
Language
Keywords
Implementation/scale up , Working with people and communities , Neighbourhood health & place-based working , Rapid evaluation
Alternative Title
Abstract
Partnership working is central to public health practice in London boroughs. From neighbourhood-based prevention and integrated care to community safety, inequalities and system transformation, outcomes increasingly depend on effective collaboration across local government, health, academia, VCSE organisations and communities. Despite this, partnerships are often loosely defined and rarely evaluated in a consistent or meaningful way. As a result, learning about what makes partnerships effective — and how they contribute to public health impact — is frequently lost.
This interactive training session is designed for public health professionals and other local authority staff working on the wider determinants of health in London boroughs, who want to strengthen their skills and confidence in evaluating partnerships in practice.
Delivered by training leads from four London-based Health Determinants Research Collaborations (HDRCs), the session provides a concise framing of partnerships as relational, multi-actor systems embedded within place-based public health delivery. HDRCs are briefly situated as NIHR-funded partnership infrastructure within local government, providing shared context without extensive institutional detail. Participants will be offered optional pre-session reading to introduce key concepts and maximise time for practical learning during the session.
Participants will reflect briefly on the types of partnerships they work within - from small operational networks to formal strategic and system-level partnerships - before moving into the core focus of the session: evaluating partnerships. Through structured small-group discussion and peer exchange, participants will explore how partnerships are currently assessed, what evidence is used, and where gaps or challenges arise. Particular attention will be paid to relational, process and system-level outcomes that are often overlooked but critical to partnership effectiveness.
The second half of the session introduces a small number of practical tools to support partnership evaluation in complex public health settings. These include partnership mapping to understand roles and influence; structured reflection tools focused on partnership functioning and trust; theory-of-change approaches to clarify shared aims and outcomes; and light-touch qualitative methods to capture learning and system change alongside existing performance measures. Tools will be introduced through facilitated walkthroughs and shared with participants as a post-session handout.
The session concludes by signposting a planned London-wide HDRC training series on shared public health learning needs. Attendees will leave with practical tools, shared language and increased
confidence in evaluating and strengthening public health partnerships.