WE were commissioned to independently evaluate the Sickle Cell Society’s London Peer Mentoring Programme, delivered between 2023 and 2025 with funding from NHS England. The programme supports young people aged 10–24 living with Sickle Cell Disorder across London through one-to-one mentoring delivered by trained adults with lived experience.
We adopted a mixed-methods approach, including surveys, interviews, focus groups and analysis of programme and healthcare usage data against costs for services. Alongside exploring health and wellbeing outcomes, the evaluation examined the programme’s contribution to more effective use of NHS financial resources. For the economic analysis, in addition to clinical data provided to us by NHS leads, we also included analysis of self-reported changes in beneficiary use of emergency departments, inpatient bed days, specialist nursing support and other healthcare services.
A careful and balanced approach was taken to estimate potential savings, recognising both the limitations of attributing avoided healthcare use directly to the programme and the wider context of underinvestment in sickle cell services. Rather than assuming that reduced service use (and therefore reduced costs) was always positive, the evaluation considered whether participants were making more informed and appropriate choices about when to access care.