The Cheshire & Merseyside (C&M) Directors of Public Health (DsPH) held their weekly call, with colleagues from PHE North West on Friday 13 November.
- Communications and campaigns – Tracey Lambert gave an update on the new C&M behaviour change COVID campaign for 20-30 year olds which will launch on 30 November via social media channels and the C&M ‘Take a minute’ COVID campaign that Wirral Council have led on behalf of the two LRF Comms Cells which launched today. A communications plan for the C&M Hub has been developed and a stakeholder briefing and slide deck will be shared. The Liverpool City Region (LCR) collaboration with national behavioural insights team is progressing with a gap analysis of existing work in progress. Tracey updated that a focus on public messaging about self-isolation will be important especially with upscaled testing.
- C&M Strategic Contact Tracing Board – The first meeting of the Board was held on 13 November, chaired by Julie Webster and will provide strategic overview to ensure delivery of outcomes. A strategic planning workshop is being arranged to help develop a shared understanding of contact tracing in C&M.
- COVID-19 Exceedance report – Sam Ghebrehewet from PHE outlined that despite 12 November seeing the highest jump in cases nationally, most of Merseyside and Warrington are seeing a downward trend and Cheshire East and Cheshire West and Chester are levelling off. North West hospital admissions/ICU bed capacity plateauing.
- LCR Escalation Framework – Eileen O’Meara shared the updated framework, with key messages, indicators and principles and discussed CEO feedback.
- Mass Testing (MAST) roll out – Sue Forster chaired a C&M Task group to share good practice and a key challenge is logistics. Sam highlighted the minimal gains from mass testing in schools if there is not an outbreak. Contact will be made with the two LRFs to discuss setting up cells for Logistics.
- Health & Care Partnership (HCP)/Marmot Community – The Marmot work was paused due to COVID but a call took place last week with the Marmot team. The HCP are keen to progress this work focusing on reducing inequalities with DsPH support. A specification will be revised to focus on what good looks like in terms of integrated health and care in a place. Work led by Chris Bentley, in terms of inequalities to ward level, will be incorporated.
- Good news and gratitude – The DsPH shared good news and gratitude including:
- Well done to Matt Ashton and colleagues in Liverpool for their hard work on the mass testing pilot
- Thank you to Cheshire & Warrington intelligence cell colleagues and C&M Exceedance Group for their support
- Thank you to Sam Ghebrehewet and colleagues from PHE for their continued support and advice
- Thank you to Ian Ashworth for LRF leadership and chairing the DsPH group in such challenging times
- Well done to colleagues who supported the joint event with NW Employers on mental health champions