Working together to co-produce better health: The experience of the Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care for Northwest London

To improve the provision of health care, academics can be asked to collaborate with clinicians, and clinicians with patients. Generating good evidence on health care practice depends on these collaborations working well. Yet such relationships are not the norm. We examine how social science research and health care improvement practice were linked through a programme designed to broker collaborations between clinicians, academics, and patients to improve health care - the UK National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care for Northwest London. We discuss the successes and challenges of the collaboration and make suggestions on how to develop synergistic relationships that facilitate co-production of social science knowledge and its translation into practice.