Chris Dayson, Eleanor Lockley, Sara Trentham-Black, Lucy Robertshaw, Susan Hampshaw, Meg Barclay, Sarah Clough, Ellie Holding, Ellen Bennett, Chloe Froggatt, Clair Malaney, Emilie Taylor, Thahmina Begum | July 2026
In December 2005 we published ‘Creative Health Boards: A Guide to Getting Started’ to provide offers a practical framework to support creative health partners develop collaborative approaches to embedding creative health in health systems. The research that underpinned the guide has now been published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Perspectives in Public Health as part of their special issue on creative health. You can read the full open access article here (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17579139261462487) but we have also summarised the research below.
What were the aims of the research?
To support our project goal of developing, spreading and scaling the Creative Health Board model, our team set out to understand:
- How collaborative cross-sector approaches for creative health are being enacted across the UK and
- Factors that enable these collaborations to be effective.
What was the academic background to the research?
Our research combined two academic concepts to help interpret what we found. First, we positioned the findings within broader debates about collaborative governance, a term used to describe arrangements where one or more public sector bodies and non-state stakeholders engage in collective decision-making through formal process to deliberate and build consensus around shared policy priorities. Second, we drew on the principles of realist research to develop integrated programme theories (IPTs), high level statements that explain how a programme is expected to work in different contexts.
How was the research conducted?
We undertook 16 qualitative interviews with people from different sectors actively involved in creative health collaborations across the UK. The interviews were developed upon 16 informal scoping conversations and explored the purpose and effectiveness of different approaches to collaborative work.
What were the main findings of the research?
We identified eight IPTs in relation to collaborative governance for creative health. Two of these related to why collaborative governance is needed and are associated with the need to secure buy-in from senior stakeholders within the health and social care system to secure access to the resources needed for creative health provision to be sustainable. The remaining six IPTs covered how participants in the creative governance initiatives suggest it could be effective. These included building trust between key actors and institutions, providing opportunities to develop the creative health workforce, gathering and disseminating evidence about the efficacy of creative health, being responsive to lived experience perspectives, having clearly defined lines of accountability and ensuring alignment with and between key policies and strategies.
What are the main takeaways from the research?
Overall, our findings suggest that first and foremost, collaboration with creative health should focus on relationships, trust building and accountability. When these foundations are in place they can provide a platform for further shared activities with a focus on sustainability, workforce development, evidence, lived experience and alignment with key policies and strategies. However, it is also important to remember that collaborative priorities should also be based on an understanding of local strengths and gaps and that ‘what works’ in one area is not guaranteed to work in another.
To cite this research, please use the following reference:
Dayson, C., Lockley, E., Trentham-Black, S., Robertshaw, L., Hampshaw, S., Barclay, M., Clough, S., Holding, E., Bennett, E., Froggatt, C., Malaney, C., Taylor, E., & Begum, T. (2026). Collaborative governance for creative health: initial programme theories for collaborating across sectors and disciplines. Perspectives in Public Health. 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/17579139261462487
