Guidance

Public involvement and engagement strategy

Updated 1 April 2026

Summary

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA):

• is committed to carrying out public involvement and engagement work relating to our official statistics
• draws on numerous cross-government standards for this work, including those set out by the Office for Statistics Regulation, the UK Statistics Authority, and the Government Statistical Service
• collates information about the user groups for UKHSA official statistics and works to expand this knowledge base through user engagement
• supports public involvement and engagement, focussing on enabling collaboration, enhancing capability, and cultivating a user-centred culture

Purpose and scope

This document sets out UKHSA’s strategy for public involvement and engagement relating to the official statistics we publish. This is an essential part of the work we do to ensure that our statistics are of high value, in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

You can find a full list of our official statistics products on GOV.UK. While all producers of our statistics are invested in the value and usability of their work, this specific document aims to reflect the level of public and involvement and engagement which we work towards in our analytical products which have attained official statistics status.

This strategy is aspirational and reflects the standards we strive for in the public involvement and engagement related to our official statistics products.

User engagement in UKHSA statistics

UKHSA is committed to putting users at the centre of decision-making about the statistics we publish, in accordance with our Code of Practice for Statistics obligations.

Ensuring that our statistics are accessible, responsible, and trustworthy via strong user engagement is also integral to the UKHSA data strategy.

To aid the progression of these organisational goals, we want our statistics to:

• drive policy and operational decision-making within government and beyond, with a particular focus on the country’s health system
• enable the public to easily understand health and disease information
• make information easy to access and to use for media and communications professionals so they can share key public health messages promptly and accurately
• support the evaluation of policy and operational initiatives

These objectives are only possible in tandem with comprehensive user engagement to ensure that we understand the user needs we aim to meet.

We have produced this strategy in line with the user engagement strategy for statistics from the Government Statistical Service and statistics for the public good from the UK Statistics Authority.

In accordance with these principles, we aim to centre collaboration, capability, and culture in our engagement work. By this we mean:

• collaborating across boundaries to offer a more coherent user experience
• building capability and equipping producers of statistics with the practical skills and tools to deliver effective user engagement activities
• strengthening our culture and ensuring user engagement is always an ongoing and essential part of a statistics producer’s role

Users of UKHSA official statistics

Everyone who uses UKHSA’s official statistics for any purpose is regarded as a user. We are always striving to further expand our knowledge base about users of UKHSA official statistics and will continue to do this through further user research.

Users are encouraged to get in touch about our official statistics publications. We provide contact details on all of our official statistics releases and commit to responding promptly to queries. To supplement this direct feedback, we regularly review information from Google Analytics to understand the relative popularity and usage behaviours of our various outputs and formats.

Many healthcare professionals use UKHSA statistics for monitoring trends, evaluating the effectiveness of the interventions they are using, and informing their clinical decision-making.

Clinical commissioning groups are key as well, and consistently a high-priority user for statistics producing teams. These groups generally need to understand the patterns of disease and treatment so that they can allocate resource appropriately. These are critical decisions to the bottom line of how a health issue is handled and can be the difference between health providers having or not having the capacity to provide treatment to people.

Public health policy makers use the statistics to inform their plans and priorities, and what targets they might set against different action plans.

Academics use our data to explore trends in their research or to tie it in with other datasets.

Third sector organisations use our statistics for raising awareness, often making infographics, leaflets, and presentations, meaning that data visualisations are an important concern for these groups. They also use our data generally to support advocacy work, advocating for policy changes and highlighting at-risk groups.

Our statistics appear in news reports, so we know that journalists are a key user. Their work with our data elevates it among the general public, so having more knowledge and engagement with them as a user group is essential in ensuring that when our statistics reach the general public, our messages are clear and understandable.

This brings us to the final user group which is members of the general public who are health-conscious or interested in public-health related issues.

Our commitment to users

We ensure that all our users can have confidence that we are applying the Code of Practice to our official statistics releases by:

• pre-announcing the time and date for the publication of our official statistics
• publishing our official statistics on the time and date pre-announced
• publishing quality and methodology information (QMI) reports for our official statistics
• publishing our official statistics release practice policy
• publishing our data management in official statistics policy

We will meet the needs of our users by:

• developing our understanding of our users and their needs
• enabling users to give us feedback as well as seeking information proactively, particularly around any proposed changes to releases in terms of content or timing
• ensuring our publications are accessible and follow best practice guidelines
• identifying the best ways of sharing our statistics with users and using multiple channels to communicate information
• responding promptly and accurately to questions from our users
• making improvements to our publications based on feedback from users

Meeting our commitment

This strategy sets out how we intend to meet these commitments. It applies to involving users in decisions around what official statistics we publish, what additional information we share, how frequently the information is released and when we should cease to publish an official statistics publication.

Collaboration

There are several initiatives we take to ensure that we maintain collaboration between statistics producers and other partners within UKHSA and across other departments and agencies in the health family. We are an active part of the UK Health Statistics steering group and the Health and Social Care Statistics Leadership Forum which enable collaboration with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS England, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the devolved governments.

We have frequently collaborated on cross-cutting pieces of work such as on the joined-up consultation on health and social care statistical outputs, published by DHSC, including the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, the NHS Business Services Authority, UKHSA, the ONS, and NHS England]. We have also collaborated with these organisations on aligning practices on pre-release access and disclosure control.

Our operational access policy ensures that producers can have close relationships with UKHSA communications professionals so that, where appropriate, information campaigns can be developed to support the sharing of information with the general public.

Capability

The UKHSA statistics capability and user engagement team provide individual support to producers of official statistics so that they can engage with users. Guidance is provided on how to design user engagement and covers best practice for different user research methods, with tailored support available to support producers in their user engagement exercises.

UKHSA’s Head of Profession unit provides individual support to official statistics producers to ensure that publications comply with accessibility guidelines. Best practice on how to ensure that information is accessible is shared across the group.

Culture

The UKHSA statistics capability and user engagement team works with producers to place user need at the heart of decision-making around UKHSA’s official statistics. A framework for user engagement helps producers understand how well they are engaging with users, setting out an improvement plan with concrete steps to follow where appropriate.