Health Literacy Seminar 25th June 2015

1. www.nationalvoices.org.uk @NVTweeting
Health Literacy and
the reforms: a
voluntary sector
challenge
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2. What if we made an intervention & nobody came?
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Are NHS Health Checks a waste of time?
3 June 2015
Pressure is mounting on the Government’s flagship
vascular screening programme, finds Caroline Price
In the dying days of his Government, former Prime
Minister Gordon Brown announced all adults over 40
would be entitled to a free health check every five
years.
But if some GPs have their way, NHS Health Checks
will suffer the same fate as the man from the Manse.
An independent evaluation of the scheme, due out
next month, will show poor uptake and limited
benefits to those it identifies as high risk.
Cochrane researchers said the
Government’s persistence with the
health checks threatened ‘the very idea
of evidence-based public health care’.
The RCGP’s new working group on
overdiagnosis and overtreatment told
PHE the programme ‘should not be
continued without robust evidence in
support’.

3. What if we got person centred care…
I am listened to about what works for me, in my life.
I am supported to understand my choices and to set and
achieve my goals.
I work with my team to agree a care and support plan.
I have as much control of planning my care and support as I
want.
I can decide the kind of support I need and how to receive it.
Taken together, my care and support help me live the life I
want to the best of my ability
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4. Wellbeing Our Way
• 3 year programme funded by Health
Foundation
• Aims to build the capacity of VCS
organisations to support people’s
engagement in their health and care
• Mapping VCS activity, establishing
communities of practice, trying to improve
volorgs’ policy and programme approach
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6. WOW – interest so far
• Peer support: what works?
• Care and support planning: what’s the role of community
organisations?
• Demonstrating impact: how do we prove we are successfully
engaging people?
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7. So what does VCS need from system?
• Commissioning as relational ‘art’ not contracting –
Social Value approach
• But also different contracts – NHS short contract;
alliance contracts
• Different view of ‘outcomes’ – what matters to people,
e.g. independence, social connection
• Interlinking – navigation, social prescribing, ‘more than
medicine’, involvement in MDTs/care planning
• Recognition of building people’s health literacy as
contributor to better outcomes
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8. Where do we get it in ‘The Matrix’?
Locally
• Fragmented commissioning: LAs, CCGs, LATs, specialised
• Commissioning split from public health
• Does commissioning work – or should we target providers?
• Too many CCGs – what about region, sub-region?
Nationally
• 14 system leading bodies
• Do they lead systems? (NHS IQ, PHE, HEE)
• National strategies defunct or can’t be named
• National clinical directors underpowered; clinical networks
barely visible
• Who would be responsible for ‘person centred care’ or related
interventions? E.g. the one person in NHSE responsible for
‘shared decision making’
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9. So who we gonna call?
• Called for new national
programmes/drives for person centred
approaches e.g. care and support
planning
• This is not integral to anybody’s business
• PCC won’t succeed unless health literacy
challenge is recognised, researched and
tackled
• Who is capable of this?
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Gen II reforms

10. In collaboration - tactics
• Build coalitions of the willing
• Bring statutory, think tank/academic,
professional & voluntary sector together
• Work outside but alongside the system
• Work short term for long term
 Is it working? Zhou Enlai – ‘too early to
say’
 Could it work on health literacy?
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11. www.nationalvoices.org.uk @NVTweeting
Health Literacy and
the reforms: a
voluntary sector
challenge
11