…Excellence in Health Creation Awards now open for entries….
Dear ColleaguesWhat a summer we’ve had! As we pack away our shorts and sunglasses for another nine months, we want to bring you the latest news of the changes taking place at Health Creation Alliance (NNHSA). It’s been a busy period of organisation change and now, with those hot sunny days just a dim and distant memory, we are looking towards a step change in our activity.
Our major preoccupation has been to set up a community interest company (CIC), so that our legal form better reflects our refocussed values and more clearly articulates the benefit to the community. This change was unanimously approved at our annual general meeting (AGM) and we are well on our way to operationalising our new CIC.
We have also been focussing on new activities to support delivery our 3-5 year business plan … ‘to penetrate the mainstream of all the sectors’. Having spent the last couple of years building an understanding of ‘Health Creation’ with those who ‘get it’, we now want to put our collective effort into convincing those who aren’t yet persuaded. We have started to build our Wellness Self-Learning Programme to equip professionals with skills in Health Creation and to support rapid spread of learning skills in ‘wellness’. The funds we raise from this programme will go towards building the infrastructure to spread learning and grow the Health Creation movement.
We also held a very productive Active Member meeting in July that coincided with our AGM. Since then, we have had many incredibly generous offers of support from Active Members, who we see as essential to our success.
We are working hard to put on another excellent annual event that will take place on 21 November 2018 in Manchester. We’re co-producing our ‘2018 Partnership Summit’ with a wide-range of partners to make it the best we can. It’s called Health Creation: Wealth Creation – Fighting Health Inequalities using Community Assets. Thanks to the generosity of our partners, we are able to make it a free-to-attend event. We are also delighted to announce that 2018 Excellence in Health Creation Awards open for entries. All of our key activities over the last few months are considered in more detail in this newsletter.
Finally, over the last few months we have welcomed some new faces and we have said goodbye to others. This includes Heather Henry, our Chair for the last two and a half years and national executive member for the last seven years. Heather has, without doubt, been the driving force in our transformation to a Movement for Health Creation and she will be sorely missed. Heather, who will remain a member, has chosen to step down as chair to focus on pursuing her passion in supporting new, health creating models of care for children with asthma. We thank Heather for the tremendous amount that she has done for the Alliance, we wish her well in her new focus.
I am honoured to have been elected as chair, at our AGM, and to help steer NNHSA through its next exciting phase. Heraclitus famously said: “The only thing that is constant is change”. As change agents, we must develop the confidence to embrace change and to take the necessary actions to make positive change happen.
I hope that you enjoy this newsletter, and here is to all our continued Health Creation success!
Dr Brian Fisher
Chair
Health Creation Alliance Partnership Summit 2018
Advancing the Health Creation agenda through collaboration
21 November 2018
Please join us at the Health Creation Alliance 2018 Partnership Summit and be part of a powerful movement that is tackling the injustice of health inequalities through Health Creation.
Headlined by Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, and supported by top-class speakers, compelling case studies and people with lived-experience, Health Creation: Wealth Creation – fighting health inequalities using community assets will showcase some of the fantastic work being delivered across the north and explore how the health and care systems can best respond to many of the challenges it faces. It will be a pivotal event in the transformation of health economies across the north.
Other confirmed speakers include:
- Martyn Broadest, Director of Regeneration, Connect Housing
- Susie Finlayson, Power to Change
- Tom Lloyd-Goodwin, Associate Director, CLES
- Susie Rogers, Partner Capsticks
- Dave Sweeney, Executive Implementation Lead at Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership
- Rob Eyers, CEO, Telford After Care Team
Supported by Capsticks, Nesta, Power to Change and a number of leading housing organisations, this free-to-attend event will provide a unique platform for learning through the exchange of ideas, delegate-informed discussion, debate and problem-solving. We expect the learning to continue long after the Summit, through self-organised learning groups started at the event.
Visit Eventbrite to book your place today.https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/health-creation-wealth-creation-fighting-health-inequalities-using-community-assets-tickets-48773090627
2018 Excellence in Health Creation Awards Open for Entry
Celebrating health creating success
Now in its third year, the Health Creation Alliance Excellence in Health Creation Awards provides you and/or your organisation with an opportunity to have your health creating work recognised and showcased at a national level.
The winners of the three 2018 Excellence in Health Creation Awards categories will be announced by Mayor of Greater Manchester at the 2018 Partnership Summit. In addition to the award itself, winning entries will be included within our library of Human Experience to further showcase your work with a national audience.
The entry process is very simple. If you are interested entering your work, please download the entry pack. Please also forward the entry pack to any organisation or individual you think might be interested in entering.
Download your award pack here.
Health Creation in Practice
Health Creating Practices – shining a spotlight on housing
This month, NNHSA and two leading housing membership bodies – Place Shapers and the National Federation of ALMOS – called for the widespread adoption of Health Creation by frontline services across the health, care and housing sectors.
This follows the launch of ‘Health Creating Practices – shining a spotlight on housing’, the report from a collaborative project NNHSA undertook with seven of their housing association and ALMO members. The project showcases a range of initiatives including hospital discharge, addressing mental health and community-led programmes such as walking football. It shows what’s possible when people and organisations embrace Health Creation.
We were delighted to find many of the features of health creating practices at play and a healthy appetite for further learning together.
It was on this basis that we called for all frontline service providers to audit their current activities and take further steps to adopt health creating practices as part of their daily practice.
Download a copy of the report here.
Wellness Self-Learning Programme
Supporting health creating workforce and community in a rapidly changing world
Health Creation Alliance want to promote high-quality practice in Health Creation.
A good starting place for organisations and systems is to undertake our Health Creation Diagnostic Audit based on the five features of health creating practices. We can quickly assess how health creating an organisation’s practices are, providing an external benchmark and quality assurance. Doing this also identifies strengths and weaknesses that provide a baseline to inform further learning.
If you would like to know more about the Wellness Self-Learning Programme, take a look at the video on Getting Our 5-a-day, or contact neil@realitasconsulting.co.uk
NEF presentation at AGM
Control and health
At the member meeting immediately following the AGM, Daniel Button and Sarah Arnold from New Economics Foundation (nef) presented findings from two recent practical research projects they undertook:
- People’s Health Trust’s Local Conversations and Local People projects.
- NHS England’s Health as a Social Movement programme.
There is a large body of evidence that levels of control, at an individual level, effect health. And there is growing interest in collective control and health. While a lack of control is thought to cause chronic stress response and an inability to tackle/prevent health threats.
Their presentation showed the emerging findings and principles, enablers and barriers of social movements for health. They also looked at the role of the NHS in enabling social action for health.
Download a copy of the presentation here.
…other news and views…other news and views…other news and views…
July AGM
Looking to the past while preparing for a better future
Health Creation Alliance held its 2018 AGM on 11 July 2018 in Birmingham.
The main motion that was agreed was to close Health Creation Alliance and Primary Care Alliance and to set up a Community Interest Company (C.I.C.) – The Health Creation Alliance CIC – through which to continue the purposes of the Health Creation Alliance. This legal form better reflects our purpose and community benefit and we hope that being regulated by the CIC Regulator will provide greater assurance, particularly to funders.
Our commitment requires us to involve people with lived experience in our activities to influence policy and systems as well as in designing and delivering our learning activities. In so doing, we are aiming to bring benefits to the individuals themselves and to communities more broadly through better policy-making and better designed and run services that are better suited to the needs of communities.
Please click here for the press release
Please contact Neil@realitasconsulting.co.uk if you would like a copy of the AGM minutes.
National Pharmacy Association argues the Health Inequalities case
More investment to improve outcomes
In advancing the argument for more investment in fighting health Inequalities, Nic O’Neill, Health Creation Alliance resident member and Merron Simpson, Health Creation Alliance Chief Executive, joined NPA and a number of other leading organisations in sharing this view with the Guardian as part of a NHS 70th anniversary article on ‘How to keep the NHS alive and well’.
The Guardian carried the Letter to the Editor signed by a number of the participants at the roundtable, calling for concerted action on health inequalities. You can read the letter here:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/25/wishing-the-nhs-an-even-longer-life-as-it-turns-70
A write up of the event is available from the NPA website: https://www.npa.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Spolight-on-Health-Equality.AW_..pdf
A ‘Call-For-Action’ video shot on the day is still available for re-tweeting (#healthequality)
Mental Health Policy Commission: Investing in a Resilient Generation
Looking beyond medical interventions is the key to a prosperous nation
Commission member, Heather Henry, Chair of Health Creation Alliance, contributed to this outstanding report led by Prof Paul Burstow of the University of Birmingham.
The Commission examined evidence from people with experience of mental distress, families, practitioners, communities, academics, and policy makers to form ground-breaking recommendations that will support a truly different approach and provide a strategic framework for mental health for the 21st Century.
The Commission calls for whole system remodelling and believes that closing the prevention gap should be made a fifth Grand Challenge by the Government. It says
“The Commission’s case for change is simple: the nation’s future prosperity requires a sustained investment in the nation’s mental health resilience” … “By systematically deploying evidence-informed practices and programmes that maximise resilience and minimise risk factors, it is within our grasp to halve the number of people living with life-long mental health problems in a generation”.
Read the full report or watch a few short videoshere: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/impact/policy-commissions/mental-health/index.aspx
