Update from the Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership Prevention Board

The C&M HCP Population Health Board met on 18^th May and the key messages from the meeting are below:

1. Population health funding – Chair, Eileen O’Meara, updated that the recent bid for population health funding to the HCP was successful and will cover three areas;
   1. Support for Place based programmes
   2. Expert input around population health to other transformational Boards e.g. mental health and children and young people
   3. Continue with the work on reducing alcohol harm
2. Welcome to Sarah O’Brien – Sarah joined the Board for the first time and updated on the HCP, due to become a formal ICS in April 2022. The top priority for the HCP is population health and tackling health inequalities. The Population Health Board will support each Place and Eileen will report progress into the main HCP Partnership Board. Sarah also stressed the importance of the Population Health Board connecting with other programmes. It was raised and agreed that strong representation from Primary Care colleagues was essential.
3. Everton in Mind presentation – Martin Carey gave an update on the exciting plans for Goodison Park once Everton FC move to their new ground. They will build on the good work from Everton in the Community and invest in programmes to help with dementia and life-long learning. Dave Sweeney was thanked for his support with this project. Martin will come back to the Board at a later date with an update.
4. Population health board Terms of Reference – The updated Terms of Reference were shared and membership will be expanded to include academic and digital colleagues.
5. New population health dashboard – Sharon McAteer talked through the dashboard in development which will be an overview of population health needs in C&M. Information will be available at a LA/CCG level and the structure is in development. It is hoped the dashboard will be live at the end of July/early August. The Board supported the dashboard and gave thanks to Sharon for her work.
6. AMR Board final report – Raj Rajendran, co-chair of the AMR Board, gave a summary of achievements as the work of this Board comes to an end. There has been a focus on obtaining baseline data of prescribing, standardising antibiotic prescribing and virtual reality platforms for training medical students. There has been a reduction in antibiotic prescribing across C&M as a result. The Population Health Board thanked Raj and the AMR Board for their dedication and support over the last three years.
7. CVD prevention activity – Mel Roche gave an update on behalf of the CVD prevention network. CVD is a priority for the HCP and the network is working towards achieving the national ambitions for Atrial Fibrillation, blood pressure (BP) and cholesterol. A recent focus has been the BP at home programme and 10,000 BP machines have been supplied to people across C&M. The network is now looking at the feasibility of restarting community BP testing, for example using the Wellpoint Kiosks.
8. Reducing alcohol harm – Ravi Menghani ran through a summary of recent activity including work with Alcohol Care Teams, a new dashboard and Intervention and Brief Advice. The citizen’s enquiry on alcohol harm, including Minimum Unit Price, was paused due to COVID-19 but the team are looking at restarting this in the future. Dr Paul Richardson thanked Ravi for progressing this programme of work through the pandemic.
9. Marmot/health inequalities – Eileen O’Meara updated that a paper had been presented to the HCP Board and the work to become a Marmot Community was progressing. The system diagnostics with the Marmot team is underway and a launch event is planned for stakeholders in July.
10. Special thanks to Jon Develing – Eileen O’Meara will take over as SRO for the Population Health Board and gave thanks to Jon Develing for all his support with the Population Health Board to date.