The start of 2023 has been a challenging time for many. The cost-of-living crisis, the ongoing impact of COVID-19 and extreme winter pressures have led to the perfect storm that is being felt across health and care workforces and by society as a whole. Underlying all this is the disappointing trend towards an increase in health inequalities.
Health Creation has an important role to play in reducing health inequalities and a commitment to working differently with people and their communities has never been more necessary. Our Health Creation: Coming of Age series of events in late October 2022 demonstrated how this might be achieved through several nationally driven programmes and the feedback we received showed the events were highly valued.
Through 2023, THCA will itself be ‘Coming of Age’ as we welcome our new Chair who will help steer our organisation through the next phases of our development. We will also be continuing the Health Creation: Coming of Age theme and with the support of our members and partners, we will be redoubling our efforts to support all Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) to adopt, embed and make Health Creation business as usual.
Our agenda for the coming year will include promotion of a number of ´Calls to Action´ based on those proposed by participants of October´s events, working on debate-changing narratives, removing more of the barriers to change with sector leaders and rolling-out our enhanced Discovery Learning Offer to support you to make change happen on the ground.
Thank you for your continued membership and support and please feel free to forward this newsletter to any of your colleagues.
We hope you enjoy your newsletter, and as always, we welcome any feedback.
Regards
Merron Simpson
Chief Executive
“Health Creation is essential to the sustainability and success of the NHS”.
Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive Officer, NHS Confederation at THCA’s Coming of Age House of Lords celebration, October 2022.
Health Creation: Coming of Age assets
Videos, presentations and rich chat content
The Health Creation Alliance has led a national movement for Health Creation to address health inequalities for seven years and over the last three years we have seen a step change in levels of interest from across systems.
In October 2022, THCA marked this with ´Health Creation: Coming of Age´, a series of on-line and in-person sessions that called for all ICSs to:
- recognise Health Creation as equally important in addressing health inequalities as the treatment of illness and prevention of ill-health
- and embed it as a way of working making it business as usual across the whole system
In support of this, the sessions considered how Health Creation might be adopted by ICSs including through current nationally-driven programmes such as Population Health Management, NHS Estate and Spaces, Core20PLUS5 and NHS anchors.
Through 2023, we will be honing and promoting the calls to action that Coming of Age delegates came up with and as a movement member we hope you will support this endeavour.
The videos, presentations and chat from each of the following on-line sessions can be accessed here.
- An introduction to Health Creation
- Embedding Health Creation across all levels of the system
- Health Creating Population Health Management; using community insight and assets to get it right
- Health creating community spaces – what matters to communities?
- Health Creation and Core20PLUS5Creating health by supporting broader social and economic development: what can anchors do and what else needs to happen?
A big thank you to our media partners, National Health Executive and Public Sector Executive and to all our sponsors without whose support Health Creation: Coming of Age would not have been possible.
HLM Architects I NHS Property Services I Novartis I PPL I South Central West I Sollis
Visit National Health Executive or Public Sector Executive for a free subscription.
Voices for Change
A platform to be heard
The Health Creation Alliance creates and takes many opportunities for us and our members to influence and inform national policy. Here are some of our recent activities:
- Submission to Labour’s National Policy Forum. March 2023.
- Submission to Health and Social Care Select Committee Prevention Inquiry. Feb 2023.
- Response to Hewitt Review Call for evidence: How the oversight and governance of integrated care systems can best enable them to succeed. Jan 2023.
Excellence in Health Creation Awards
Spotlight on ´Together with Music´ from Intergenerational Music Making
Winner of Health Creating ´Community Connector´ of the Year
The 2023 Excellence in Health Creation Awards recognised high performing teams and individuals. Read and learn more about all the winners here.
Intergenerational Music Making (IMM) is a national not-for-profit organisation that delivers programmes, training, and campaigning & research to improve the mental and physical wellbeing of the old and the young in communities across the UK, through the power of music.
In December 2020, IMM launched ‘Together with Music’, a virtual, intergenerational programme that connects schools, community groups and creatives to their local care homes and older people through music making. Following the relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions, the programme developed to an in-person one. In 2022, TwM reached over 1400 members with 78,000 individuals engaging, 96 creative partners and 634 trained staff.
Watch an inspiring short four-minute video about the programme here.
“Together with Music is a great example of Health Creation in practice that adopts all six features of health creating practices. What really stands out though is the use of music to build meaningful connections between pupils from a local school and residents of a care home, through which the lives of both pupils and residents have been improved.” Entry reviewer´s comment
Appraising how community-led organisations impact on health and well-being
Research protocol published
The Health Creation Alliance is a partner in a consortium of organisations working with Glasgow Caledonian University on a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) funded realist evaluation and economic appraisal into how community-led organisations use of assets-based approaches improves health and well-being of people living in deprived areas, and how that might be different in different contexts.
BMJ Open have now published the research protocol.
Learn more about this initiative here.
The Health Creation Alliance’s Discovery Learning Programmes
Refreshed offer now available
The Health Creation Alliance has refreshed its Discovery Learning Offer. There are now more than seven options to choose from to further enhance your organisation’s or systems’ approach:
- A Webinar: Introduction to Health Creation
- Good to Great approach to address a clinical priority through Health Creation
- Action Learning: Strengthened Communities through Health Creation
- Reframing the dialogue
- Wholesale systems change transformation programme
- Community of Practice
- Lived Experience Impact Group
If you would like to learn more about our Discovery Learning Offer and whether our programmes might be right for your neighbourhood, place or system, please contact us: neil@thehealthcreationalliance.org
RECENT REPORTS FROM THCA
Creating spaces for community and patient wellbeing
This research project was undertaken by THCA for NHS Property Services, the outcomes of which provide in-depth recommendations on how spaces can be made welcoming and health creating.
The report digs deep. It provides a wealth of information about what matters most to 10 different communities that typically experience poor health outcomes and also draws attention to the many commonalities in eight ‘big themes’. It contains 12 recommendations useful for anyone wishing to create spaces that support communities to create health.
THCA will speak more about this at the GovNet NHS Estates conference on 19 April. The conference is free to attend and you can find more details here.
DATES FOR THE DIARY
Annual Members Event | Thursday 25 May @ 14:00-16:00
This Zoom meeting is an early opportunity for members to hear insights and perspectives from THCA’s new Chair who will be announced soon after Easter.
You will also be invited to input into our plans for 2023-24 and help to shape some debate-changing narratives and Coming of Age Calls to Action, all of which will further energise our movement for Health Creation to become as business as usual in reducing health inequalities.
We will announce our keynote speaker soon.
Please pop the date and joining details into your diary.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82515894020
Meeting ID: 825 1589 4020
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+441314601196,,82515894020# United Kingdom
+442034815237,,82515894020# United Kingdom
Date to be released soon…
Shifting the dial: health creating approaches to community mental health
Integrated Care Systems and their constituent parts must adopt and embed Health Creation as a way of working to reduce health inequalities. This last event in the series will explore why, and demonstrate how, Health Creation can improve community mental health outcomes.
This session will be delivered in partnership with Rethink Mental Illness, one of the largest charitable providers of services for people living with mental illness.
AND FINALLY…
The Health Creation Alliance Social Media Channels
Supporting us support informed decision-making about addressing health inequalities
As Health Creation comes of age, it has never been so important for us to cut through the social media clutter to ensure that our, and the voice of our members is heard. For this we need your support. Please:
- Share this newsletter with all your contacts who might be interested in addressing health inequalities through Health Creation
- Follow us on Twitter and retweet relevant posts
- Follow us on LinkedIn
- Subscribe to You Tube
A big thank you to all those partners that support us in our ambition to make Health Creation business as usual across the health and care system!