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Expertise, Perspectives and the Healthcare Challenges of the Future
Dr Rebecca Jones, CSaP Policy Fellow and Head of Cancer, Ageing and Data at the Office for Life Sciences, tells us about how her CSaP Policy Fellowship informs her work in Government. Dr Jones says that consulting a range of perspectives is the key to identifying suitable policy that tackles healthcare challenges.
The theme for this blog series is “What do you think is the future of health?” As a policy-maker, the question I pose for myself and my team is slightly different – “Will what we’re delivering move us towards a positive future, whatever that future looks like?” This means understanding what’s happened previously, what’s happening now, and what might the future look like. The key to understanding this is expertise.
Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange at The University of Cambridge
Building strong links between experts and policymakers has been a key theme throughout my work as a policymaker in central government. The Centre for Science and Policy Fellowship scheme has always seemed attractive – a chance to investigate “the questions”, the niggly big picture questions about your policy area you want and need to answer, but rarely get a chance to focus on. The CSaP fellowship scheme matches you with Cambridge experts to explore these questions from a range of different perspectives, building new networks of expertise and new insights to take back to your team and shape your work. Staying in Cambridge and meeting the experts in person gives you space from the day job to immerse yourself in thinking about these questions.
I started my current role in the Office for Life Sciences just over a year ago. A central Government team, the Office for Life Sciences focuses on improving the health and wealth of the nation through a thriving life sciences sector. My team is responsible for ensuring the UK’s health data supports R&D in a way that works for all stakeholders, including the Life Sciences sector. Data and AI also play a role in the two big healthcare challenges we’re tackling, Cancer and Ageing. To do this, we’re learning from recent history during the pandemic when different organisations worked together towards a common goal and working on these challenges in partnership with industry, academia, teams across Government, and the third sector.
I’ve taken lots of information and perspectives back to share with and shape the work of my team, and we’ve had some really useful follow-on meetings with some of the experts I met. I’ve taken away great insights including around how we use liquid biopsies in cancer diagnosis and treatment, and the ethics around AI and cancer diagnosis. I also learnt the power of different perspectives that challenge the narrative you tell yourself – the perspective of a statistician differs from that of a researcher developing an innovation or a public health expert.
You need all these perspectives to build up a picture and identify useful policy ways forward that are grounded in the evidence. Working across the boundaries of different specialities can be complex, navigating differing priorities and different ways of using language. Bringing together different perspectives, expertise and ways of doing things will be key to my work in tackling healthcare challenges, and to the future of health itself. Working across boundaries and considering the impact of our work now on the future of health are things we should all consider.
*This blog was originally published on the Pembroke College Corporate Partnership Programme website as part of their ‘Future of Health’ blog series for 2023. You can read the blog series here.
Image by Matt Botsford - Unsplash