Our impact 2023-24

Between April 2023 and March 2024 we continued to focus on priority areas where we could make the biggest difference:

1. National wellbeing methods and measures
2. Place and community
3. Loneliness and connection
4. Working age

Overall we have:

• Championed wellbeing measurement and evaluation as a way to track national progress and organisational impact, advising on updated UK national wellbeing measures and producing quarterly insight reports.
• Supported wellbeing in business and the workforce by producing new evidence-informed guidance and tools for evaluation and support.
• Developed the understanding of place and community wellbeing, creating e-learning modules and exploring the evidence on agency and control.
• Explored loneliness and connection across the life course, drawing together the evidence and practice landscape to uncover what works to tackle it.
• Built our community through conversation and knowledge sharing, cultivating new partnerships and strengthening existing collaborations.
• Evolved our organisational strategy to clarify mission and aims, and refreshed our brand to embody our values and increase accessibility, integrating enhanced considerations and inclusive language.

For deep-dives into each of our focus areas, read the full report.

To support our priorities and achieve our aims we operated a multidisciplinary, cross-sector core team that brought together expertise across five distinct functions:

1. Leadership and collaboration
2. Communication and engagement
3. Evidence and analysis
4. Implementation and learning
5. Knowledge-sharing
6. Governance and operations

From April 2023 to March 2024 we have developed and shared knowledge with:

• Public sector – national, devolved and local government, and the wider public sector including education, policing and healthcare.
• Research– individuals and research organisations across the UK and globally, such as University of the Arts London, Brunel University London, and The Health Foundation.
• Businesses – large, small and multinational across retail, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, media and education, and professional bodies such as CIPD and Institute for Employment Studies.
• Civil society – charities, social enterprises and community groups, as well as funders and commissioners, including Centre for Thriving Places, Marie Curie, Historic England, Intergenerational England, Association for Independent Museums, Pro Bono Economics, and Spirit of 2012, New Local and People’s Health Trust.

In April, our final month of operation, we will be: 

• Launching the Understanding Society wellbeing dashboard.
• Publishing the findings from our review of life satisfaction evidence, and our trials strategy for using life satisfaction in experimental research.
• Sharing initial findings on associations between social isolation and health outcomes in midlife, using data from the 1970 British Cohort Study and the 1958 National Child Development Study. 
• Reporting on the legacy learnings from ten years of grant making by Spirit of 2012.
• Continuing to develop a toolkit for MedTec developers that shows how technologies can be designed and configured to maximise kidney patient quality of life and renal health professionals’ job satisfaction.