NHS Health Checks Event 3 November 2009

Tuesday, 17 November 2009 - 8:56pm

Central, Prospect and West Newcastle PBC Groups organised a joint meeting at Newcastle Civic Centre on 3rd November to consider the best way to respond to the NHS Health Checks programme,  which is due to go live across North of Tyne early in 2010.
We had over 80 people attending representing a broad range of interested partner agencies ranging from Community Action on Health to Newcastle Hospitals and community pharmacy to NDUC. It was particularly pleasing to see so many clinicians present. This really helped set the teamwork theme.

The evening was a great success and the most common word used in the feedback was "enthused". Dr Jane Skinner ably chaired the event and welcomed Jill Mitchell, Dr. Rachel Turnbull and Dr. Bharat Sibal from NHS North of Tyne to update on the way that the programme will run next year. We also heard from Neil Watson, Director of Pharmacy at Newcastle Hospitals who discussed the way to achieve an integrated approach to delivering Health Checks.

Our main guest speakers were from The Big Bolton Health Check, the project with the most success to date with over 40,000 people undertaking checks. This was a truly inspirational presentation setting out a clear challenge for what we might achieve if we are able to replicate the energy, leadership, drive and ingenious simplicity of their work.

One of the key lessons to be learned from Bolton was the role of the Health Trainer and it was useful to have representatives from HealthWORKS Newcastle at the event as this role was shown to be a highly cost effective solution within the Bolton project.

The PBC Group Chairs are committed to respond in a teamwork way and build upon the information and positive mood of the event. If you would like to follow up any aspect please contact debbi.carlisle@blueriverconsulting.co.uk.