HLC National Conference

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HLC National Conference Glasgow, 2-11-06 Simon
Goodenough Chair, Healthy Living Alliance
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Enthusiasm for living

• A comprehensive health service must evoke the
  enthusiastic and intelligent co-operation of
  the general public.
• Ministry of Health Report on Medical Schools,
  1944

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Creativity

• Creativity can be seen as the key to human
  survival
• research with veterans of the Air Force
  Survival School

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What was the HLC brief?

• the exploration of new and holistic
  approaches in public health and the delivery of
  innovative solutions that address health and
  social inequalities for people in the most
  deprived areas
• DH / NOF 1999, following Our Healthier Nation

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HLCs deliver Choosing Health
208 (81) HLCs provide projects involving
physical activity / exercise
Obesity
Smoking
161(63) HLCs provide a smoking cessation service
Alcohol
124 (48) HLCs deliver alcohol support
programmes
139 (54) HLCs deliver programmes addressing
sexual health
Sexual Health
238 (93) HLCs offer mental health services for
a diverse range of communities
Mental Health
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HLCs and joined-up thinking
Treasury
Health Inequalities, Voluntary Community
DCLG
Social Exclusion Active Communities
DfES
Extended Schools Healthy Schools
DEFRA
Rural Communities and Isolation
Sport and Culture
DCMS
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Healthy Living Initiatives

• Mental health
• Housing assistance
• Sexual health
• Asylum seekers
• Coronary heart
• Nutrition Diet
• Advocacy services
• Substance abuse

• Prisoners Probation
• Environment
• Exercise Obesity
• Disability
• Employment training
• Womens shelters
• Falls prevention
• Numeracy Literacy

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What do HLCs achieve?

• Engage people who dont use existing services
• Healthier lifestyles based on stimulating
  activities
• Indirect causes of ill-health alongside direct
  causes
• Links between mental, physical social
  well-being
• Independence rather than traditional dependence
• People take the lead in shaping local services
• Co-ordinate practical action between agencies

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What else do HLCs achieve?

• Prompt people to motivate each other
• Create a context in which people thrive
• Self-confidence, social identity, social capital
• Behavioural change, control own health choices
• Ill-health prevention, good health maintenance
• Intervention upstream saves downstream
• Healthy Living Communities social enterprise

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Research Evaluation

• Psychological and social benefits
• Health behaviour and health benefits
• Transformational change
• 60 experienced clinically meaningful changes in
  mental well-being
• 30 underwent dramatic transformations in mood
  and behaviour
• Peninsula Medical School

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Self-determination

• Old Age will only be respected if it fights for
  itself, maintains its rights, avoids dependence
  on anyone and asserts control over its own to its
  last breathe.
• Cicero, 1st Century BC

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257 HLCs in 9 regions
The Alliance will help to embed the approaches
developed by HLCs into the restructuring of
health and social care.
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What is the Alliance?

• Independent alliance of HLCs
• Based on regional networks
• To raise profile and share practice
• Company, charity infrastructure
• Providing national support network
• For community-based organisations
• Delivering preventive health locally

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What will the Alliance do?

• Training, mentoring, peer support
• Community-led healthcare qualifications
• Improved governance and leadership
• Quality assurance and accreditation
• Research, data policy development
• What now? Building regional networks
• Fund-raising and making friends

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• Go to the people,
• live with them, love them,
• learn from them.
• Start with what they know,
• build with what they have
• and work with the best leaders,
• so that when the work is done,
• people can say
• We did it ourselves.
• Lao Tzu, 700 BC

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• I am larger, better than I thought,
• I did not know
• I held so much goodness.
• Walt Whitman, 19th Century