Watchdog urges Government to better track impact of health and social care aid

By Helen Corbett, Reporter16th July 2024News EnglandBusiness / Funding / Finance, Government / Politics, News England

The Government should do more to measure the impact of its health and social care foreign assistance programmes, the aid watchdog has said.

Health, research and innovation funded by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) was “largely relevant and effective” but the Government should do more to enhance and track the impact of projects, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) said in a review.

The DHSC’s aid spending on global health research and innovation will have reached almost £1 billion between 2018/19 and 2024/25, and in 2023, its overseas development aid spend was the third largest of all government departments, after the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Home Office.

The ICAI said in its recommendations that DHSC should “focus on pathways to impact across its global health research portfolios including by strengthening guidance for potential applicants and putting in place mechanisms for planning and measuring impact”.

ICAI noted that some DHSC-funded projects were already helping to improve health outcomes, such as through typhoid and Covid-19 vaccines.

The watchdog also said it had visited projects in India and Malawi that had the potential to improve neonatal and maternal health or outcomes for those who contracted communicable diseases.

But many programmes lacked detailed frameworks, which had led to varying approaches when it came to reporting their impact, the ICAI said.

Dr Tamsyn Barton (pictured), who was the ICAI’s chief commissioner at the time of the review, said: “We were pleased to see the positive difference UK aid is making to global health research and innovation, especially in areas that have been underfunded or subject to stigma such as mental health.

“We recommend that the Department of Health and Social Care should now focus on increasing the impact of its work, embedding the principle of equitable partnership between high and lower-income countries, and untying its aid to get the best science and value for money so people around the world can benefit.”

“Untying aid” is the practice of removing restrictions that require aid to be spent on goods and services from the donor country or from a small group of specified countries.