About Us

The Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Systems and Commissioning (PRUComm) is a team of academics from The University of Manchester, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and the University of Kent. We started working together in 2011 and we have many years of experience researching how health and social care services are planned and carried out in the UK.

We study how the NHS and social care services are organised, how decisions are made about what services to provide, how money is spent, and how those in charge keep an eye on what is happening. We want to find out what the impact of any changes might be on people receiving services and on the staff providing them.

In the past we have carried out large programmes of research, looking at whether changes to the way the NHS is organised have made it easier or harder to deliver good services. Most recently, new organisations called Integrated Care Systems have been created. They bring together NHS organisations (such as hospitals), local councils and charities to work together to plan and deliver services for local people. Over the next five years we will carry out research studies to find out how the new Systems are working, what things they are finding difficult and what help they might need from the government or from the NHS.