2020 annual report and financial statements

Our annual report shares highlights from our work in 2020 and sets out our plans for 2021. It also contains our financial statements for 2020.

As the pandemic took hold in the UK during 2020, the Foundation’s work was quickly reoriented. Our contributions included providing emergency assistance (donating £2.5m in direct relief), together with analysis of how the pandemic was affecting the health and social care system and identifying lessons for the longer term recovery. 

Some of our successes in 2020 included:

• Launch of the REAL (Research and Economic Analysis for the Long term) Centre – a major new Health Foundation initiative to improve projections of supply and demand for care over the next 20 years. 
• A new monthly Health Foundation podcast. The series seeks to inform debate around the big questions in health and care, aiming to bring a fresh perspective on topical issues in health and care.
• Publication of our popular COVID-19 policy tracker – documenting national government and health and social care system responses to COVID-19 in England, and how these changed over time.
• Our work on excess deaths during the pandemic, published in spring and summer, cumulatively generated over 82,300 reads and significant media interest.
• We published two timely Health Foundation briefings exploring the pandemic’s impact on the social care sector during the first wave. 
• We supported individuals and organisations across the health and social care system, including seconding our staff to several national organisations. We also mobilised our 4,000-strong Q community to share learning and experiences in order to improve care during the pandemic.

This report also looks at our plans for 2021 across our strategic priority areas.