The Birmingham, RAND and Cambridge Evaluation (BRACE) Rapid Evaluation Centre

Our proposed team and ways of working build on the experience gained over the last five years as the Birmingham, RAND and Cambridge Rapid Evaluation Centre (BRACE). We will continue to co-design and deliver rapid evaluations that are rigorous in quality, responsive to stakeholders’ needs and provide timely evidence to inform decision-making. BRACE will continue to deploy a range of evaluation methods to rigorously assess implementation, effectiveness and potential for sustainability, scaling-up and replicability of services across the NHS; producing informative, engaging and high-impact research outputs. We will enhance our highly successful partnership by working more closely with National Voices and their network of over 200 community groups. We welcome The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute to offer additional methodological expertise using its novel Thiscovery online platform. We have also strengthened our quantitative expertise and will continue to deliver evaluations that combine mixed-method designs (including quantitative, qualitative and health economics methods) to generate formative learning and summative evidence of effectiveness as well as impact. Our approach to rapid evaluation is built on four principles: 1. Rapidity: we have the necessary track record to scope, design, undertake and disseminate evaluations in a manner that is timely and appropriately rapid. 2. Responsiveness: we have the systems and processes in place to mobilise quickly, to scope and co-design evaluations and form bespoke project teams to deliver rapid and robust learning. 3. Relevance: we are committed to co-producing evaluations with service users, carers, managers, clinicians, care professionals and other stakeholders to ensure we address key questions and deliver necessary learning. 4. Rigour: we ensure all our evaluations are theoretically and methodologically strong, producing credible evidence in diverse formats to support policy, planning, implementation and monitoring of innovations. These principles are reflected in our tried-and-tested approach to rapid evaluation that is operationalised through a step-wise method from scoping and feasibility testing, to co-design, proportionate ‘alongside’ evaluation, and the timely sharing of formative and summative learning. Recognising the importance of flexibility to changing needs, each step in our approach involves close engagement with service users, carers and communities to ensure that our evaluations address the evidence needs of decision-makers, fulfil our commitment to inclusion and diversity, and focus on the outcomes that matter most to users of health and care services. Our team has extensive expertise in participatory evaluation and has learned from the current BRACE contract how to balance rapid work with meaningful patient and public engagement and involvement. Patients and the public will be partners across all our activities: as one of our three Rapid Advisory Panels; the Centre’s management and governance arrangements; and the delivery of individual evaluations. We recognise that innovations in and evaluations of health and care services can have significant implications for health inequalities and for inclusion. Questions of inequalities will be included in all our evaluations, with a specific emphasis in the scoping and co-design phase drawing on our extensive networks in policy and practice communities and with world-leading research specialists.