Returner Support

“Supporting Returning Harkness Fellows on their Leadership Journey”

The Harkness Fellows Association was awarded a grant by the Commonwealth Fund to explore and develop approaches to providing more support to Harkness Fellows on their return to the UK. This briefing summarises the work and resultant actions.

The project has shown that there is a great resource of expertise and willingness amongst former Fellows to support the recently returned Fellows.

Project Intention.

Leadership can be learned.  To be a good leader requires learning through experience, through trial and error, through careful thought and planning, through reflection, through listening.  A key part in developing leadership skills is having people to help; people who can model good practice, who can share lessons learned, who can provide a sounding board and who can mentor on a continuing basis.

Harkness Fellows return to their home country filled with ideas for research, innovation and improvement but “back in the real world”, returning Fellows often find themselves struggling to cope with a return to their former professional lives and find unexpected barriers to engaging others in their enthusiastic plans.

Prior to this project, the Harkness Fellows Association had been supporting returning Fellows in the UK for more than five years, mostly on a fairly informal basis.  There was scope to enhance this to enable more focused activity to support more recent Fellows in achieving their goals.  Key to this would be better information about former Fellows and how they might help.

Findings – the needs of Returning Fellows

Initial work involved a survey with Senior Fellows (Harkness Fellows in Health Practice and Policy, who have completed their year in the US) from the last few years to ask what support might have been helpful to them.  These results were discussed with Fellows who were happy to engage in further discussion. Meeting other Fellows was highlighted as useful, whether for work purposes or informal discussions. As alumni career trajectories would suggest, for most Fellows things go well on return, but the journey can have ups and downs. It can take a long time to work out how to use the learning from the fellowship year. Senior Fellows could therefore benefit from additional support that continues for many years, not just in the year of return. Fellows miss the ‘access to all levels’, and the ‘time to explore’ aspects of being a Harkness Fellow.

A year away can impact personal lives, as much as career and work roles. Best laid plans do not always work out; life-changing events can intrude. There could be value for some in building resilience; this resilience needs consideration early on, possibly even before leaving the UK for the year in the US. Individual needs are very different but there are some common themes indicating the need for individual support as well as networking groups; for example, those taking children with them on the fellowship, those in clinical roles, those in academia, and those seeking to set up tech start-ups on their return.

Findings – the expertise of Harkness Alumni

A key element of the project was the survey of all Fellows to ascertain who would be willing to engage in these support activities to enable other Fellows in their leadership journey. Results were very encouraging. Extensive work was first needed to update contact details of former Fellows; the Harkness Fellows Association had contact with many alumni, although information had been dependent on Fellows staying in touch. Survey questions were asked to establish key areas of expertise., which led to a rich resource of expertise and experience. In addition to Fellows with clinical, academic, policy and managerial expertise in health care, many from other fields have become Board members in health and health associated organisations. There are also many innovators in other fields, who may be especially valuable in supporting more recent Fellows.  There is overwhelming support for engaging with recent Fellows with a wide range of expertise available.

Going Forward

An underpinning theme has been to make it easier for Fellows to know who else is in the network and how to connect with them. The anticipation that a flexible model would be needed was accurate. As a result of this work, the HFA still invites completing Fellows to have an initial chat with the Returners lead once back in the UK. This conversation covers what help they might want, beyond what they already receive from the Commonwealth Fund, the Senior Fellows network and their peer group. Contacts from earlier years who may have relevant knowledge, or leadership expertise are offered as appropriate.

In addition, The Health Foundation and HFA are offering a post return workshop with invited guests from the Health Foundation staff and associates, and the Alumni expertise list, at a time when the returning Fellow is ready.

On-line networks for common interests will be set up from 2026, based on those expressing interest in the survey. Subsidised invitations to social gatherings, regional and national, will continue. Invitations to speak and engage in on-line discussions and podcasts will increase awareness of others to contact. More recent Fellows are currently engaged in the Harkness Reflections project, which includes podcast interviews with earlier Fellows.

Overall, this has been an invaluable piece of work to help the Harkness Fellows Association – in partnership with the Commonwealth Fund – engage earlier Harkness Fellows in the support of more recent Senior Fellows as they use the learning from their Fellowship on their leadership journey. The impact of this work will be felt over the years to come.

The Harkness Fellows Association is grateful to the Commonwealth Fund for their support.

September 2025