The Health Creation Alliance

Events

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Primary Care Networks and health inequalities – three events

Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol – Jan-Mar 2020

The emerging Primary Care Networks (PCNs) will be expected, by 2021, to deliver ‘locally agreed action to tackle inequalities’ – one of seven national service specifications. The NHS Long-term Plan commits to a ‘more concerted and systematic approach to reducing health inequalities’ with a promise that action on inequalities will be central to everything the NHS does. This is happening alongside a renewed focus by the Health Minister on prevention, social prescribing and universal personalised care.

 

Notwithstanding a number of challenges in the design and contracting of PCNs that need to be addressed and the impact of broader political agendas, this provides an opportunity to bring action on health inequalities into the mainstream of primary care and to address complex local issues in partnership with communities and other local partners. PCNs are uniquely placed to lead and support primary care practitioners to play their part in a wider transformation that is taking place which involves a shift to a new dynamic in the relationship between primary care practitioners, the communities they serve and other local partners who serve the same communities.

 

Health Creation Alliance and RCGP Health Inequalities Standing Group, supported by NHS England and NHS Improvement, will host three one-day events to look at how PCNs can best lead and support these changes. They will take place between January and March 2020. Dates and booking details will be available soon.

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Health Creation: Wealth Creation – Fighting Health Inequalities using Community Assets

The Health Creation Alliance 2018 Partnership Summit was a resounding success.

‘Health Creation: Wealth Creation – fighting health inequalities using community assets’, explored and identified how the various types of assets – citizen, physical and workforce – can play a role in creating health to help address the injustice of health inequalities.

Health Creation Alliance Summit 2018

Chaired by Jeanelle De Gruchy, President of the Association of Directors of Public Health, the Summit featured contributors who enable, deliver and have lived-experience of Health Creation and who have experience on how assets can be deployed to fight health inequalities.

The Summit’s partners, speakers, compelling case studies and delegates learnt about a wide-range of approaches to recognising , identifying, and deploying assets.

The learning that took place, and the outputs from the Summit, are particularly relevant in the light of the government’s NHS Long-Term Plan. Employing health creating approaches at the frontline across all services is core to achieving real reductions in health inequalities.

Health Creation Alliance statement on the Plan. Read more…

Public Heath Executive article on the Summit outputs and the Plan. Read more…

A key theme emerging from the Summit was for better education – of professionals and the public – about what ‘health’ really means. Currently people tend to associate ‘health’ with ‘the National Health Service’, whereas the World Health Organisation definition is much more relevant.

 

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. Constitution of the World Health Organization: Principles

As a result of this and other discussions emerging from the event, Health Creation Alliance is calling for:

  • Widespread adoption of Health Creation across all sectors – creating health is everyone’s business and must be everyone’s priority: the NHS, communities, housing, pharmacy, businesses, primary care and local authorities.
  • Better education for all sectors and communities – in schools, colleges, universities, community centres – on the health and wellbeing consequences of health inequality, and how to go about creating the conditions that make and keep people well.
  • Better use of assets – such as getting best social value from health estate – in the fight against health inequalities.
  • People and community-centred approaches, such as community development, to become routine in support of Health Creation and the fight health inequalities.
  • Changes to procurement frameworks to enable local people to be commissioned to self-organise.

Thank you to our valued sponsors

Health Creation Alliance Summit 2018 Sponsors

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How can Primary Care Networks be successful in reducing health inequalities?

London 2nd July 2019

Health Creation Alliance hosted an event in London on 2nd July, jointly with Royal College of GPs Health Inequalities Group, on the theme ‘How can Primary Care Networks succeed in reducing health inequalities’.

As usual, we had a very diverse group of people in the room. We heard many community perspectives as well as those from GPs working in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, community pharmacy, housing and NHS England and Improvement. There were some healthy debates! We produced this event report which includes a quick-start guide to reducing health inequalities for Primary Care Networks: PCNs conference report_3.0.

Here is a video from the event: watch the video

Thanks for Home Group and Power to Change for their support in hosting this event.