Health Inequality Leads Health Creation Skills Enhancement Programme

Mid & South Essex NHS

The Health Inequality Lead (HIL) Health Creation Skills Enhancement Programme commenced in October 2024 and ended in August 2025. It targeted capacity building and leadership skills enhancement to support health creating practice in Primary Care Networks and across Mid & South Essex (MSE) Alliances.  

Significant progress in adopting and embedding health creation into current programmes was made through three Action Learning Groups (ALGs) – Basildon and Brentwood, Mid-South Essex and South East Essex.

Key learnings were:

·       The value of listening to communities to understand their strengths and the opportunities for supporting them self-organise, even if it feels too early in the process – this lays the foundation for effective power sharing/shifting. This listening should also inform how to embed reciprocity into all activities.

·       The importance of going out to where people are and involving them in the planning of activities, understanding what their reciprocity needs are, what motivates them to attend health checks and how to use their strengths and connections to encourage others to attend.

·       The power of leveraging individual strengths and fostering reciprocity among patients, including involving patients in mutual support systems, such as telephone buddy schemes and self-organising peer groups. Engaging patients in conversations about their personal strengths, potential contributions, and expectations from the service can lead to more sustainable and self-directed support networks.

In addition THCA reflections:

·       Flexible and responsive facilitation meant that ALG members were enabled to use adopt and embed health creation into a real project being delivered by their practice or PCN, rather than a single project that only benefitted a few. There were common themes and goals that were used to frame the discussions.

·       The complementary mix of members in each ALG enabled participants to bring a range of perspectives, information and experience which meant attendees truly advised and supported each other to develop and grow their projects.

·       The programme successfully introduced participants to a range of perspectives and thought leadership, enabling them to adopt The Framework for Health Creation, while supporting the emergence of Health Creation Leaders who can support adoption of health creation among colleagues, partners and communities.