13 February 2013

Statement of Collaboration Between NICE and Public Heath England

NICE and Public Health England and have agreed to collaborate on:

  • Communicating with and supporting the local public health system
  • Reviewing evidence and providing evidence-based guidance and other products
  • Providing access to evidence about public health
  • Providing support to put guidance into practice
  • Creating a standard public health taxonomy.

NICE's functions relate to the giving of advice or guidance, provision of information, or making recommendations about, any matter concerned with the provision of public health services. This includes public health guidance, QOF indicators for the public health domain and Briefings for Local Government.

The Secretary of State will be responsible for referring public health topics to NICE, and PHE and other partners will be closely involved in this process. The Secretary of State may also commission NICE to develop Quality Standards for Public Health.

PHE will have an overview of the range of products and support offered to those working in public health. PHE will work with NICE to support the adoption of evidence-based public health interventions, for example by providing accessible summaries of evidence, and help users to navigate a coherent public health evidence journey.

PHE may undertake some reviews of evidence where it has the expertise required, and would aim to meet NICE accreditation requirements. PHE will work jointly with NICE to ensure continued procurement of a suitable range of national electronic resources (journals, e-books, bibliographic databases) for public health, and to secure continued access to these resource for the public health system, particularly public health teams in local authorities. These will be provided through the NICE Evidence portal.

NICE and PHE web services will be co-ordinated and aligned, particularly in the areas of content development; metadata and taxonomy standards; technical infrastructure and architecture; and alerts, feeds and syndication where these are appropriate.

The next steps are for PHE and NICE to finalise a Memorandum of Understanding, to collaborate on the development of a joint work programme and to begin the implementation of the work programme as soon as possible.