Provider trusts from Cheshire & Merseyside attend workshop to enhance preventative approaches to healthcare

The 2025 NHS Prevention Pledge Summit was held in Liverpool on Thursday 16th October, bringing together the 16 NHS provider trusts from across Cheshire and Merseyside. This year’s summit – the third to be held for the programme – comprised of three workshops, including examples of current practice from trusts, guest speakers, and group-based exercises focussed on specific prevention themes. Additional delegates were also in attendance from NHS Cheshire & Merseyside, NHS England, active partnerships and the Champs Public Health Collaborative.

The NHS Prevention Pledge is a key workstream within NHS Cheshire and Merseyside’s Population Health Programme. The 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 16 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 prevention of physical and mental ill health, health inequalities, social value and anchor institution practices, and staff wellbeing. HEG has also developed a newer version of the Prevention Pledge for use in primary care settings and is currently working with a cohort of 13 primary care organisations across the sub-region.

The event in Liverpool opened with reflections from Dr Matthew Philpott (Executive Director, HEG) on the recently published 10 Year Health Plan for England, and how many of the core commitments within the NHS Prevention Pledge align with the Plan’s ambitions for prevention of illness and ensuring everyone has the same chance to live a healthy life through delivery of more equitable, sustainable and person-centred care.

The first of the morning’s workshops focussed on Making Every Contact Count (MECC) and opened with a presentation from The Walton Centre who have recently relaunched their MECC training offer in February 2025 which features an e-learning programme and delivery of two MECC ‘themed’ events each year. The workshop then heard from guest speakers, namely Ben Anderson (Consultant in Public Health, NHS England) and Roberta Pomponio (Active Cheshire) who provided overviews of opportunities to enhance the MECC approach at both national and regional levels, ahead of conducting group-based exercises amongst trusts in the room.

The second workshop was led by Andrea Crossfield, Strategic Lead for the Cheshire and Merseyside All Together Smokefree (ATSF) programme. This session featured a case study from Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust on barriers and enablers associated with implementing smokefree NHS estates, followed by an overview of a new NHS Smokefree Spaces Toolkit designed to support Trusts in embedding smokefree culture and leadership. Groups then worked through a series of questions exploring how trusts currently implement smokefree policies, and practical actions trusts could take individually or in collaboration in anticipation of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill becoming law in the next 18 months.

The final workshop of the morning investigated how trusts in Cheshire and Merseyside can create a more active workforce in line with the sub-region’s All Together Active strategy, which will be refreshed in 2026. The session included a case study on the wide range of physical activity opportunities and partnerships developed by East Cheshire Trust presented by Astrid Greenberry, followed by an overview of the All Together Active strategy and its “system belief” in an active workforce from Danny Woodworth and Mike Jones. Participants then engaged in facilitated group exercises to identify current practices, imagine an ideal active workplace, and consider pragmatic actions to embed physical activity across the workforce.

Commenting on the event, Matthew Philpott from Health Equalities Group said:

“The NHS Prevention Pledge provides our 16 provider trusts with a framework to plan, deliver and measure their work on prevention, health inequalities and anchor institution practices, and is helping to deliver on many of the ambitions regarding prevention set out in the new 10 Year Health Plan. This year’s Summit has taken a deep dive into three of the framework’s core commitments, looking at MECC, smokefree NHS estates, and active workforces, using a workshop approach to better understand the current picture within trusts. The group-based exercises we ran over the course of the morning generated some brilliant new ideas for short and medium-term actions, and revealed how trusts can take more of a collaborative approach with providers across the system to embed prevention within governance, operations and clinical environments. We will be writing up findings from workshops and presenting this back to trusts and NHS Cheshire & Merseyside through a report in the weeks ahead.”

A full findings and recommendations report capturing the learning from the three workshops has now been published, and can be accessed below: