Corporate report

UKHSA Advisory Board: UKHSA draft global strategy

Updated 2 February 2023

Date: Tuesday 24 January 2023

Sponsor: Scott McPherson, Director General, Strategy, Policy and Programmes

Presenter: Scott McPherson

Purpose of the paper

The purpose of the paper is to obtain feedback from the Advisory Board on the UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) draft global strategy.

Recommendation

The Advisory Board is asked to:

• endorse the overall approach to the draft global strategy
• comment on aspects of the draft strategy that could be strengthened
• note work to align the global strategic priorities with other UKHSA strategies in development
• note work to align the draft global strategy with UK Government strategies and priorities
• note that the Executive Committee will consider the global strategy again in February 2023

Download the UKHSA draft global strategy PowerPoint slides, presented at the Advisory Board meeting on 24 January 2023.

Background summary

The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that the way we will respond to future health threats requires an even greater focus on international collaboration in addition to that required to sustain excellent scientific knowledge and development.

We need to work with our global partners to prepare, ensuring we have strong surveillance systems in place that spot dangerous new health threats. We need to respond to them together. We also need to build capacity at the local, national and global level to ensure the capability to respond effectively. We need to work collaboratively to strengthen global health security and tackle health threats at origin.

Working globally also provides an opportunity to constantly learn from others, benchmark our response arrangements and resilience, and helps us improve our own skills (especially in outbreak response) and inform our own national scientific prowess and response to health threats.

UKHSA’s global strategy provides direction and outlines UKHSA’s role in the changing global health security landscape as we evolve into the emerging era of living with COVID-19 and preparedness for all external hazards. A clear set of global priorities for the agency will improve our global health security outcomes as well as aid investment, service and policy delivery decisions. This will ultimately align groups around a unified approach to global health security so that we can better prepare for, prevent and respond to threats to health.

In developing the draft global strategy we consulted across the agency as well as our partners across government, including the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, Cabinet Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The UKHSA Executive Committee considered the global strategy at their meeting on 24 November 2022. The version presented to the Advisory Board takes into consideration the comments made during that meeting.

The draft global strategy aligns with UKHSA’s draft three-year strategic priorities, which have previously been shared with the Advisory Board. We are engaging with other government departments to align to both existing and new UK priorities. The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy and the Biological Security Strategy are both being refreshed, and the cross-government Global Health Strategic Framework is being developed. UKHSA will have a key role in implementing these and our global strategic priorities should reflect this.

Alongside the strategy we are developing an implementation plan detailing the remits, responsibilities and delivery plans of UKHSA’s global strategic priorities. Once the strategy is approved, the global strategy team will also begin tracking progress on our global priorities, in alignment with broader UKHSA and cross-government global reporting.

Future dates

The Executive Committee will consider the final version of the global strategy in February 2023. A plan detailing key global priorities the agency should focus on in 2023, and how we are going to deliver them, will be shared with the Advisory Board in the spring.

Scott McPherson
Director General, Strategy, Policy and Programmes January 2023