Creative Health Economics: A new MCA workstream
Creative Health Economics: A new workstream to build the Economic Business Case for Creative Health
Mobilising Community Assets (MCA) to Tackle Health Inequalities will be developing a new workstream which focuses on setting up the building blocks of an economic business case for creative health.
Key findings from the MCA programme to date reveal that a significant stumbling block in building stronger ties between the creative health ecosystem, the NHS and public health, is the lack of a defined business case that sets out the economic basis for commissioning. NHS commissioning is increasingly focused on using economic evidence to drive "missions" focused on productivity, prevention, and the shift toward community-based care, particularly through Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). This approach uses data to ensure financial sustainability, reduce health inequalities, and deliver high-quality, cost-effective care (NHS Strategic commissioning framework).
In order to tackle the communication gap - caused by the lack of a shared language - between the creative health community and decision-makers and commissioners in health systems, UKRI-AHRC research programme Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities will develop, coordinate and deliver three work packages which will help build the economic case for creative health.
In the first work package we will map existing creative health ecosystems in the MCA portfolio, with a focus on identifying the types of creative health participation data and existing methods for linkage with local population health needs and priorities (such as those identified in Joint Strategic Needs Assessments). This will build on learning from the MCA deep dive into Gloucestershire Integrated Care System. We will also test alternative economic models which foreground lived experience, building on work developed within the MCA Phase 3 REALITIES project, where the usefulness of standard health economic tools in capturing ‘value’ and ‘quality of life’ is challenged.
In the second work package, UCL’s Prof Daisy Fancourt and team will undertake a systematic health economic evidence review to identify, appraise, and synthesise global evidence around creative health interventions, and undertake analyses of the impact of referrals to creative health interventions on health service utilisation.
Work package three is led by Dr Daniel Fujiwara and colleagues; it will develop guidance for the Creative Health sector on economic evaluation methodologies, informed by the HM Treasury Green Book and Magenta Book. This will include the creation of a template ‘Business Case’ to help standardisation across the sector, and offer learning to inform future policy decision making, research prioritisation, and investment.
We hope this new workstream will help inform conversations regarding a ‘national minimum dataset’ for creative health, to enable a move towards data standardisation vis-a-vis creative health outcomes which can be linked more effectively with health service utilisation.
To find out more, join us on Friday 27 March 2026, at 11:00, for a Creative Health Economics webinar, where will present our research findings, along with presentations from our partners at Arts Council Wales, Bangor University and Edge Hill University. Register here.
Building the Economic Case for Creative Health – Friday 27 March 2026, 11:00 GMT (90 mins)
The webinar will include three presentations that each articulate the economic impact of creative health.
(1) Findings from the Arts Council Wales report:
A presentation of the findings from the first-ever national investigation into the economic impact of the arts on the NHS and social care in Wales, which provided an assessment of the economic impact of the arts on the NHS and social care in Wales, as well as wider population health and societal impacts. Presenters: Rosie Dow (Arts Council Wales), Jacob Davies (Bangor University) and Vicky Karkou (Edge Hill University)
(2) Findings from the Mobilising programme’s economic evaluation:
Helen Chatterjee and Daisy Fancourt (University College London) and Daniel Fujiwara will present the findings from their health economic evidence review and will offer guidance for the Creative Health sector on economic evaluation methodologies, including how the research is creating a template ‘Business Case’ to help standardisation across the sector.
(3) Findings from a systematic evaluation of economic evaluation studies for children and young people:
Vicky Karkou (Edge Hill University) and Greg Flynn (Bangor University) will present important findings from a systematic review of economic evaluations of arts-based interventions on health outcomes for children and young people. We will also make recommendations on how best we can improve the ways in which appropriate evidence is collected to capture the health benefits from arts-based interventions with children and young people.
About Mobilising Community Assets
Mobilising Community Assets is a three-phase UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded Research Programme running from 2021 to 2027. It is coordinated by the Culture-Nature-Health Research Group at University College London, in partnership with the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH) and funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), led by Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), with Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Medical Research Council (MRC). Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities (MCA) has encouraged the projects it has funded throughout the UK to share knowledge and approaches to integration of community assets into the integrated care structures that exist in the local communities.
