NHS Prevention Pledge Summit 2024

NHS organisations from Cheshire & Merseyside gather to share current practice on prevention, anchor institution practices and health equity

The NHS Prevention Pledge Summit was held in Warrington on Tuesday 15^th October, bringing together over 80 delegates and speakers, including NHS provider trusts and primary care organisations from across Cheshire and Merseyside. Chaired by Prof Ian Ashworth (Director of Population Health, NHS Cheshire & Merseyside), the event celebrated the successes and learning to date in adoption of the NHS Prevention Pledge and was the second time provider trusts adopting the Prevention Pledge have met in person since work started on this programme in 2020. Additional delegates were also in attendance from primary care, ICB Place, local authority public health, OHID, NHS England, active partnerships and the voluntary sector.

The NHS Prevention Pledge is a key workstream within NHS Cheshire and Merseyside’s Population Health Programme. An original version of the Prevention Pledge was developed for provider trusts by public health charity Health Equalities Group (HEG) in 2020 and has now been adopted by all 17 provider trusts across the sub-region. Adoption of the Pledge provides trusts with a framework of 14 core commitments to address and measure impact on the following themes: prevention of physical and mental ill health; social value and anchor institutions; health inequalities; staff health & wellbeing; MECC; quality improvement; and, working with partners at place to prevent readmission.

In addition to working with provider trusts, HEG has now co-developed a new version of the Prevention Pledge for use in primary care settings, with a specific focus on GP surgeries and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) in the first instance. The primary care model is underpinned by just six core commitments that were developed with a working group of clinical directors in C&M and refined further through a three-month consultation process. The model is being pilot tested with a group of PCNs and GP practices in Cheshire & Merseyside across the 2024-25 financial year with a view to evaluating the impact of this framework, and the potential to scale up implementation across the primary care sector in subsequent years.

The Summit event opened with two keynotes presentations from senior representatives engaged in the prevention agenda who are working at national and regional levels. Matt Fagg, Director of Prevention and Long-Term Conditions for NHS England outlined the current and future challenges to the NHS and wider economy posed by an aging population and the significant growth of people who are economically inactive owing to long-term sickness (25%) since 2019. The event then heard from Dr Andrew Furber (Regional Director of Public Health, North West) who discussed some of the substantial achievements over the last 50 years in lowering the incidence of non-communicable diseases and related risk factors in Cheshire and Merseyside, but also drew attention to the pivotal influence of deprivation in overall life expectancy and current challenges such as childhood and adult obesity.

Delegates then heard from provider trusts and primary care pilot sites on a range of topics including: using continuous improvement techniques to embed preventative actions; delivery of treating tobacco dependency programmes in Liverpool using the CURE model; how ambulance crews are helping PCNs in Cheshire & Merseyside with hypertension case finding; and, workforce health and wellbeing programmes being delivered with partners at place for community and primary care organisations.

The second half of the event featured two themed sessions, with a first set of presentations focussing on health inequalities and equitable access to healthcare, and a latter session looking at how provider trusts are using ‘anchor institution practices’ to the increase social being generated by their organisations, and taking an environmentally sustainable approach to their operations.

Commenting on the event, Prof Ian Ashworth said:

“The NHS Prevention Pledge is a unique Cheshire and Merseyside Population Health Programme that provides our NHS organisations with a framework to plan, deliver and measure their work on prevention, health inequalities and anchor institution practices. This year’s Summit was held in Warrington and showcased examples of the brilliant work our provider trusts are delivering on the prevention agenda, and work that is emerging from a new pilot programme with a number of our Primary Care Networks and GP practices in Cheshire and Merseyside, including a community cancer screening programme that is trying to address health inequalities in South Liverpool, to a host of workplace wellness interventions that have been implemented at a GP practice in Alsager. We welcomed keynote presentations from NHS England’s Director of Prevention and Long-Term Conditions (Matthew Fagg), and the North West’s Regional Director of Public Health (Dr Andrew Furber), both highlighted the pioneering approach to prevention in Cheshire & Merseyside and opportunities to go further with this work in the years ahead.”

Download PDFs of event presentations here