Central Thistlemoor update
Hi all, I’m Susan, Integrated Neighbourhood Manager for Central Thistlemoor and Thorpe Primary Care Network and am leading on our project for this Health Inequalities Challenge Prize.
Central, Thistlemoor and Thorpe PCN is located within inner-city Peterborough. The PCN looks after a population of over 52,000 people from some of the most deprived and challenged populations in Peterborough. Many face problems relating to their health, mental wellbeing and have high incidences of smoking and alcohol consumption. Many of the population work in zero-hour contracts and with low levels of financial support and therefore prioritise their work to enable themselves to survive. Peterborough has a high proportion of patients from a BAME, and Eastern European population and the workforce of these practices reflect this and the 120+ languages spoken in the area.
As a result of a successful bidding process in 2019 and 2020, the PCN took the opportunity to develop health and wellbeing coaches from a variety of cultural backgrounds to work alongside a group of well-motivated volunteer "community champions"; to engage with local communities; spreading key health and wellbeing messages; with the vision being to reduce health inequalities and empower the population to be healthier and happier. This pilot will enable us to take this project a step further by introducing digital devices to further enable inclusivity and allow individuals to engage in health and wellbeing activities in their own time.
We are considering that this pilot project may be delivered in collaboration with Cambridgeshire Online who supply and manage digital devices to people in the community to enable them to manage their health, wellbeing, finances etc. However, we may also decide to purchase our own equipment and set up the service ourselves. We are looking to use tablets rather than mobile phones, due to the size of the screen, especially for patients with visual impairment and manual dexterity issues to manage a smaller device.
We already have 11 health coaches trained across the PCN and council who are working with patients from different backgrounds, ethnicities and languages, covering subjects such as weight management, smoking cessation, healthy lifestyle, diet, incorporating exercise etc. To enable these health coaches to extend services to those hard to reach populations, who are housebound, perhaps unable to attend face to face courses due to work/family commitments or their own insecurities or mental health issues, the provision of digital devices to those that do not have access to or the finances to purchase their own, will improve outcomes and lead to long term health improvements.
It is still early days for us with this project, but we are keen to ensure that the process and implementation plan is robust and meets the needs of our patients. Our next steps are to source the devices and develop a management plan, which we aim to have in place and up and running by October 2022. We are really excited by this project and recognize that projects like this help us ensure that we use technology to help all of our population.