Insights North East was established as a collaboration between Newcastle and Northumbria Universities, the NHS, and local authorities. From the outset, our mission has been clear: to bring evidence, expertise, and collaboration to the heart of policymaking in the North East.
What began as a knowledge exchange initiative has evolved into something more ambitious—building the systems and relationships that make evidence-informed decision making sustainable and embedded across the region.
Our collaborative foundation gives us legitimacy across the academic-policy ecosystem. We’re embedded within institutions, not external to them, which means we understand both the rigour that research demands and the pressures policymakers face.
Our team includes experienced public policy professionals who know what it’s like to work at national, regional, and local levels. Alongside them are academic researchers, skilled at synthesising and assessing knowledge to generate robust insights.
We’ve delivered rapid responses to urgent policy questions and sustained engagement on complex, long-term challenges across all five of our thematic areas. We’ve brought together hundreds of academics, policymakers, practitioners, and community voices, creating conversations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
But our real measure of success isn’t the number of projects delivered. It’s the relationships built, the trust earned, and the decisions informed by better evidence. It’s the policy interventions shaped by rigorous research and the communities whose voices are heard in policy rooms.
