Between January and March 2026, we are standing up 12 pathfinder sites in England to test options for administering a supplementary offer of vaccinations to babies and young children as part of health visits. The core offer of vaccination for this age cohort remains with general practice. Pathfinders have planned their approach to case finding and population coverage in line with these contracts, and staffed them appropriately to enable them to deliver. The majority of the pathfinder workforce has been recruited and trained ahead of going live. In most cases, 12-month employment contracts have been issued, as it was not possible to attract staff for shorter contract terms. Delivering a supplementary offer of vaccination through health visiting teams represents a significant shift and the evaluation is essential to better understand and inform decision-making on: • optimum operating models and what would be needed to enable delivery of these models, given challenges in health visitor workforce capacity • cost implications and value for money (we anticipate that this will be an expensive delivery model compared to the core offer, so would want to understand its impact and the benefits before committing to roll out more widely) • how we can best support systems and providers to confidently utilise this service model to support local families and communities, and to improve vaccination uptake in the future We are evaluating pathfinders for 12 months, reflecting our judgement on what is needed to produce robust evidence that will guide important decisions for further roll-out. NHS England commits to sharing learning in real time wherever possible, to support non-pathfinder systems to explore whether this model could address identified local need and could be funded within existing funding allocations. As an example, we have opened the face-to-face pathfinder training sessions up to a select number of non-pathfinder teams where they have expressed an interest in exploring the model.