Dear ColleaguesI would like to thank all our Summit partners and sponsors. Without their support, the annual event would not have been the great success it was. A particular thank you to Capsticks, Nesta, Power to Change and our housing partners, all of whom made the event possible.
More recently, the launch of the NHS Long-Term Plan has added impetus to our work. Its failure to recognise the value of people and community-centred approaches to improving health is of significant concern. ‘Harnessing their renewable energy’ – that featured a few years ago in the Five Year Forward
View – is arguably the most sustainable form of prevention there is. Our Summit was built around the knowledge, energy and skills of people and communities and key outputs from it have informed our response to the Plan.
2018 was a year of development for Health Creation Alliance. 2019 will be the year in which our approach will deliver greater benefit to our members and to those people and communities who are affected most by continuing health inequality. Importantly. our CIC Community Interest Statement commits us to involve people with lived-experience in our influencing and learning activities and we are developing partnerships with community-led organisations and sponsors to enable this. Our newly launched crowdfunding initiative is an additional approach to supporting meaningful people involvement. This is considered in more detail within this newsletter.
Our mission now is to drive cross-sector collaboration in the adoption of Health Creation. We want Health Creation to become business as usual.
Finally, we have some exciting news to share. We are delighted to welcome our new Patron, Lord Victor Adebowale to NNHSA. Lord Adebowale will help us make even more of an impact. Lord Adebowale is a champion for the cause of those affected by poverty, mental ill health, drugs, alcohol addictions, a learning disability and those with cross cutting and complex needs.
I hope that you enjoy your newsletter and here’s to a successful health creating 2019 for us all!
Dr Brian Fisher, Chair
Entitled ‘Health Creation: Wealth Creation – fighting health inequalities using community assets’, the Partnership Summit 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.
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 its role in fighting health inequalities. The premise of the Summit was that a whole range of assets could be better deployed to help address health inequalities. Attendees learnt about, and identified, a wide-range of approaches to achieving this from our partners, speakers, compelling case studies, and indeed from each other. Knowledge exchange between delegates, many of whom are experts, was an important feature of the event. 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 useful. “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 Summit, Health Creation Alliance is calling for:
o 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
o 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
o Better use of assets – such as getting best social value from health estate – in the fight against health inequalities
o People and community-centred approaches, such as community development, to become routine in support of Health Creation and the fight health inequalities
o Changes to procurement frameworks to enable local people to be commissioned where appropriate
o The development of Wellness Workforces so that front-line workers in different parts of the system are equipped with the skills needed to create health
The call to action. Read more…https://www.thehealthcreationalliance.org/events/ Valued Summit sponsors. Read more…https://www.thehealthcreationalliance.org/events/
For more info, download the full newsletter here. Health Creation Alliance Newsletter Winter 2019