Tuke Institute

The Tuke Institute is an international action-research organisation working on health-services. It promotes a vision of health-services that are effective in helping people get well and stay well, that treat the whole person's needs, that are free at the point of use, that are cost-effective within an ecological, true-costs framework, and that are delivered for the public’s benefit first and foremost.

The Institute is a lean, networked organisation of scientists, clinicians, advisors, and community-based advocates looking to find solutions to the current problems in health-services. To realise its vision, the Tuke Institute has a comprehensive action-research and advocacy-programme to create an international model of health-services that are engineered from the needs of the public forwards and to provide essential tools to enable services to create the best, long-term health-outcomes for all people.

Based on principles in social justice and health-effectiveness, the action-research programme contains exciting and far-reaching methods for civil capacity-development, education, and participative advocacy. The model developed to date promotes biopsychosocial, patient-centred services using nurse-led, multi-professional teams within a public service-system that integrates health and social services. These services rely on public participation in all aspects of health-services including design, delivery, audit and governance, policy, and commissioning. The model also uses an ecological, true-costs approach that precludes privatised, commercial services and consumerism.

General information

The Institute's mission is based on the experience of people who have chronic illness and know the present. physician-centred and cost-managed model of health-services does not work. To develop a more effective model, the last few years have been spent in basic research and development, looking at ways in which the emerging model can deal, in particular, with the challenges of chronic illness, ageing, and the 21st century. The initial focus is on chronic illnesses such as HIV, which will expand as the Institute's capacity expands. Other areas of immediate interest are chronic infections, neurological disorders, inflammatory and vascular disorders, and metabolic disorders including obesity. Another, complementary focus is on the role of public participation in making services relevant and effective. It is a nascent and slowly-growing organisation looking for motivated people to assist in promoting its vision and developing its solutions.