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A national focus

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A national focus

“Health literacy is one of the areas we need to make national progress on,” Anu Singh (pictured), director of public and patient participation and insight at NHS England, told delegates at this year's Self Care conference.

“At the minute, money flows the wrong way and it’s hard to get money to flow towards rewarding wellbeing,” she said, adding that the new National Self Care Programme, launched earlier this year in response to the NHS Five Year Forward View, aims to change that. 

“NHS England is currently rolling out a programme of activity, with vanguard sites and other early adopters, that seeks to reposition the nation’s health on a social, rather than biomedical model. The idea is to move away from a service to a social movement around health,” said Ms Singh.

The People and Communities Board – one of the bodies established to implement the NHS Five Year Forward View – has created six principles over the last year to help to drive change:

1. Care and support is personalised, co-ordinated, empowering

2. Services are created in partnership with citizens and communities

3. Services focus on narrowing inequalities

4. Carers are identified,supported and involved

5. Voluntary sector, community and social enterprise are key partners

6. Volunteering and social action are key enablers.

Ms Singh explained: “There’s nothing new in those principles, but behind each, we’re now putting systematic changes in place and changing contractual mechanisms. We’re trying to move away from the talk and the rhetoric towards a practical approach with new ways of working. Next year, we’ll roll out these
as standard operating procedures (SOPs).”

Ms Singh highlighted that some 35 per cent of people with long-term conditions have low or no confidence in managing their health and wellbeing. A core enabler for this programme is therefore patient activation
– supporting people to have the knowledge, skills and confidence to manage and support their own health and care, she explained.

Changes will be delivered using person- and community-centred approaches, such as peer support, health coaching, social prescribing, digital platforms and shared decision making. Digital platforms is a particular area for progress, said Ms Singh, explaining that only one per cent of NHS 111 referrals go to pharmacy and that signposting from here and the NHS Choices website needs to be reassessed to make better use of pharmacy.

For more on the Self Care Conference, see Spotlight on pharmacy and Support for professionals.

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