An NHS Prevention Pledge Summit was held in Warrington on 15 October 2024, which brought together over 80 delegates and speakers from NHS provider trusts and primary care organisations across Cheshire and Merseyside.
Chaired by NHS Cheshire and Merseyside’s Director of Population Health, Prof Ian Ashworth, the event celebrated the successes and learning to date in the roll out of the NHS Prevention Pledge to both trusts and primary care networks (PCNs).
NHS Cheshire and Merseyside’s Population Health Board worked with public health charity Health Equalities Group to develop the NHS Prevention Pledge in 2020 for trusts in Cheshire and Merseyside.
The Pledge, which has now been adopted by all 16 provider trusts in the region, aims to strengthen and scale up population-level prevention priorities, and is underpinned by 14 core commitments centring around prevention of ill health and tackling health inequalities.
A new version of the Prevention Pledge has now been developed for use in primary care settings and is currently being piloted by five Cheshire and Merseyside PCNs, with the view to begin rolling this out more widely across primary care in the coming years.
The event on 15 October was the second time provider trusts adopting the Prevention Pledge have met in person since the programme began, with additional delegates also in attendance from primary care, local authority public health teams, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, NHS England, active partnerships and the voluntary sector.
The summit opened with two keynotes presentations from Matt Fagg, Director of Prevention and Long-Term Conditions for NHS England, and Dr Andrew Furber, Regional Director of Public Health for the North West.
Matt outlined the current and future challenges to the NHS and wider economy posed by an aging population and increased rates of long-term sickness, while Andrew 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.
Delegates then heard from representatives from provider trusts and the primary care sites currently piloting the Pledge, who shared examples of best practice around prevention and the key initiatives taking place in the region.
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 embedding ‘anchor institution’ practices 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 in Warrington showcased examples of the brilliant work our provider trusts are delivering on the prevention agenda, along with work that is emerging from a new pilot programme with a number of our primary care networks and GP practices in Cheshire and Merseyside.”
“This includes 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.”
“The keynote presentations Matthew Fagg and Dr Andrew Furber both highlighted the pioneering approach to prevention in Cheshire and Merseyside, and opportunities to go further with this work in the years ahead.”
Prevention was the subject of recent analysis by NHS Confederation and Carnall Farrar (CF), which found that investing in preventative measures in health and social care can be hugely beneficial to public health and the wider economy.
Cheshire and Merseyside’s Prevention Pledge was also cited in a toolkit from NHS Confederation on how to embed action on health inequalities into integrated care systems throughout the country .
You can learn more about the Prevention Pledge at www.preventionpledge.org.uk