Population Health
And Prevention
The role and contribution of the health and care workforce in primary, secondary and tertiary prevention is well recognised and documented and has never been more essential.
NHS Long Term Plan
This film describes how the NHS Long-Term Plan sets out new commitments to strengthen the role and contribution of the NHS workforce in preventive healthcare practice.
It has been designed to be used as a conversation starter between staff and their line managers as well as teams to consider strengthening their prevention role and practice.
Latest News
Population Health Fellowship – Development Opportunity for the Clinical Health Care Workforce.
Applications are invited for the position of Fellow in Population Health, funded by Health Education England. Nine Fellowships are available across the Northwest region. Fellowships will commence from September 2022, 2 days per week for 1 year, supported by a complementary education programme. Targeted at early to mid-career registered healthcare professionals providing NHS services. This is an opportunity for NHS clinical staff across the multi-professional team to develop skills in population health. The fellowship targets early to mid-career registered healthcare professionals providing NHS services (AfC band 6 and above, or equivalent; dentists-in-training; doctors-in-training post-FY2 and their SAS equivalent). The aim of the fellowship is to develop a network of clinicians from a non-population health background with population health skills to benefit place-based healthcare systems across England.
It is a 1-year part-time programme at 2 days a week alongside clinical practice. Population Health Fellows will lead on a population health project and will be supported by a blended mostly online and virtual learning programme. For eligibility to apply please read the Rough Guide & Frequently Asked Questions documents before you apply.
About this fellowship
Fellows will be recruited by one of nine host organisations – population health projects have been determined by those host organisations. IMPORTANT – please send your application directly to the host organisation and project that you are most interested in – contact details are included on each host organisation application form and can also be found here. Application deadline for all nine fellowships is 21st March 17:00hrs. Please note: You may submit a maximum of two applications only should you be interested in one or more projects.
The host organisation that you apply to will contact you directly regarding your application and interview process.
Access to the application form is here – https://www.nwcpwd.nhs.uk/nwphpn/nwphpn-our-work/population-health-fellowship-north-west
For any further enquiries regarding the fellowship please contact [email protected] and Good Luck!
Our Mission
The public health workforce is defined as those for whom their primary function is working in a public health job or role e.g. a public health practitioner, data analyst or specialist and those that can make a significant contribution to public health but it isn’t their primary role e.g. medical staff, nurses, allied health professionals and specifically, colleagues such as yourselves at the frontline of healthcare delivery – GP’s and General Practice Nurses.
More recently, the NHS Long term Plan 2019 & People Plan 2020 /21 set out the NHS commitment to improving population health, reducing health inequalities, including key priorities to ensuring the best start in life, delivering world class care for major health problems and helping people to age well.
As healthcare professionals in primary care you have a key role in population health and preventive healthcare practice – including health protection, e.g. national screening programmes, infectious disease outbreaks) health improvement, (e.g. addressing health behaviours & underlying determinants of health such as poverty, poor education and housing) and healthcare public health, e.g. organised planning and service design using data / evidence focused on achieving best possible health outcomes)
Further profession specific support can also be found on your respective professional bodies websites such as the NMC or Royal College of GP’s
Public health workforce development is a shared responsibility of Public Health England (PHE) and Health Education England
The following information has been collated by the North West Population Health & Prevention Network – a multi professional network for the health, care and voluntary sector working across the North west funded by Health Education England.
Population Wellbeing Portal
Resources
- Role and function of PHE
- Role and function of HEE
- Faculty of Public Health
- UKPHR
- Public Health Profiles
- Public Health Outcomes Framework
- Your local public health team
- Directors of Public Health Annual Reports
- All Our Health Framework
- MECC – Practical Resources
- Health Matters
- Population Wellbeing Portal
- What Makes Us Healthy
- To join the network
These pages will be regularly updated with news and events relevant to your public health practice.
New healthier weight e-learning for the health and care workforce
The healthier weight competency framework aims to prevent excess weight with early intervention from the health and care workforce. It is grounded in a person-centered approach and aligns with making every contact count.
The framework was designed to provide the health and care workforce with guidance in promoting a healthier weight. This includes frontline staff, managers, commissioners and leaders of teams, services and organisations, in different roles and settings.
The framework can be used by staff working with any community or group within the population, including children, adults, pregnant women, care givers and vulnerable groups.
About the healthier weight competency framework e-learning programme
Based on role type, the e-learning programme consists of three modules which break down the healthier weight competency framework for:
- Frontline health and care staff – competencies required for engaging with people about a healthier weight in an informed and sensitive way
- Managers – competencies required for facilitating an informed and sensitive system wide approach to a healthier weight
- Commissioners and leaders – competencies required for facilitating an informed and sensitive system wide approach to a healthier weight.
Written by experts in the healthier weight competency framework, activities in three modules follow key principles in the framework: engage, assess and enable, including links to related e-LfH e-learning sessions and additional information.
How to access the e-learning
To learn more and to access the e-learning, please visit the healthier weight competency framework e-learning programme page.
In July 2019, The Health Creation Alliance (operating as New NHS Alliance) and RCGP HISG held a one-day event in London that posed the question “How can Primary Care Networks (PCNs) succeed in reducing health inequalities?”That event kicked-off a debate about how PCNs might connect and work in partnership with local communities and a range of local partners, how they might be constituted to support those connections, how PCNs and local partners might draw on community assets and resources and shift power to enable communities to have more control over their lives, and how this work might be funded. It concluded that:Lasting reductions in health inequalities will only be possible through working in genuine partnership with communities…by seeing them as part of the system and a significant part of the route to lasting solutions. Read the event report here.
New Public Mental Health e-learning session now available
Health Education England e-Learning for Healthcare has added a new e-learning session on Public Mental Health to its MindEd programme.
The new online session, which is free to access, outlines the impact of mental disorder, mental wellbeing, and public health interventions. Mental disorder and poor wellbeing is common and can affect everyone. However, effective interventions can treat mental disorder, prevent associated impacts, prevent mental disorder from arising and promote mental wellbeing.
The e-learning session explores how access to public mental health interventions can be improved. The learning resource covers the following subjects:
- Impacts of mental disorder and wellbeing
- Effective public mental health interventions
- Public mental health implementation gap and how to assess this
- How to improve population access to public mental health interventions.
The session is aimed at public health practitioners and trainees and members of the primary care, secondary mental health, social care and commissioning workforce.
The new session is available here.
MindEd is a free educational resource for mental health.
The variety of free resources aims to provide adults, across professions and organisations and including parents and carers, with the knowledge to support wellbeing, the understanding to identify young and older people at risk of a mental health condition and the confidence to act on their concern and, if needed, signpost to services that can help.
For more information about MindEd visit: https://www.minded.org.uk/.
Health Education England (HEE) and NHS Education for Scotland (NES) have collaborated to develop a new, free e-learning module for people working in health and care to understand the role health literacy plays in the health and social care systems.
Health literacy is about people having enough knowledge, understanding, skills and confidence to use health information, to be active partners in their care, and to navigate health and social care systems. Therefore, to access, assess and apply health information, people need to be health literate. People working in health and social care need to be aware of health literacy and of the techniques that can help to increase understanding.
The e-learning resource takes about 30 mins to complete. At the end of the module learners will know why health literacy is important and how to use some simple techniques, including TeachBack, chunk and check, using pictures and simple language to improve communication and check understanding with others. After each section learners complete an action plan, detailing how they plan to use the techniques in practice. This plan can be used as evidence of learning in appraisals or professional portfolios.
This e-learning resource is pitched educationally as an introduction to health literacy, why it is important and the core techniques that can be used to improve health literacy. The resource supports a more blended approach to learning and spreading awareness of health literacy, building on the NES resource in The Health Literacy Place and HEE’s health literacy toolkit.
For more information about the free Health Literacy e-learning programme, including details on how to access it, click here.
Health Education England is launching a series of new videos to help fight the double threats of sepsis and antimicrobial resistance.
The videos – aimed at frontline staff, clinicians and members of the public – have been created in support of World Antimicrobial Awareness Week.
Sepsis is the diagnosis used when an infection becomes so severe that it affects organ function. It causes an estimated one in five deaths worldwide and is a significant cause of death in the UK.
Antimicrobial resistance is a major global health issue caused by the overuse of antibiotics and inappropriate prescribing. An increasing number of infections are becoming harder to cure as the antibiotics used to treat them become less effective.
HEE has now produced two new animations aimed at raising awareness among health service staff, while HEE chief executive Dr Navina Evans has recorded a video message highlighting the urgency of the issue. See the new animations below for further information.
It’s Mental Health Awareness Week and a great time to think about how we’re feeling. The national lockdown has been difficult for many of us and now that restrictions are easing there may be new challenges to consider. So for Mental Health Awareness Week we have a new article on the COVID-19 hub that gives you tips on how to cope with anxiety