At last week’s Health and Wellbeing forum we discussed involving resident voice in transforming health care through the Flourishing Communities project. We also held a workshop on the Long term conditions ‘the Vital 5’ strategic plan and how the voluntary and community sector can get involved and what we would need to contribute to make changes to residents health and wellbeing. Flourishing communities is a partnership between Limehouse project, Praxis, the Women’s Inclusive Team and THCVS. The project is coproduced with women from each organisation. The project has trained women as cervical screening champions and will now be training women from the communities as maternity champions. The women raise awareness of issues and signpost to local VCS organisations that offer support. If you would like the women to come and run a culturally and linguistically sensitive session for your service users please contact Zinebe Maach zinebem@wit.org.uk. This was followed by a lively discussion the new strategic programme for prevention of long term conditions (LTC) aligned to the Vital 5: - Alcohol
- Smoking
- Obesity
- Blood pressure
- Mental Health
The workshop aimed to: 1. To share with VCS partners early thinking about the scope and structure of a Tower Hamlets Strategic LTC Prevention Programme. The Programme would align and strengthen initiatives to reduce inequalities in risks for poor health (the ‘vital 5’). 2. To co-develop the success measures and outcome metrics of the programme: what we should be aiming to achieve 3. To gather VCS input about what actions could be taken by: (a) the health and care system and (b) the VCS in order to improve our local approach to LTC Prevention. The programme will establish a joined-up approach across Tower Hamlets. If you would like to contribute to the discussion the Jamboard, please click here. We will keep you updated when we find out the next steps. The programme is based on the Kings health Partners programme Vital 5. We briefly updated the group on the Health Inequalities fund which was discussed at the last forum in April to agree a set of principles: - Co-produced
- Supports the VCS to be integrated into the health system
- Increases VCS voice in decision making
- Involves meaningful collaboration
- Considers power balances
- Addresses protected characteristics
- Has an impact on health equalities
- Includes provision for children and young people
- A focus on the most difficult thing to get funding for
- Equitable and including smaller organisations
THCVS is currently working with the borough to agree the priorities that the programme will align with to support the VCS to create an integrated approach to working with health and social care. We will keep you posted as to the next steps. Click here for the power point presentation from the forum.
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