Welcome to the home page of the Lancashire and South Cumbria Population Health Academy.

What is the Academy?

The Academy was established by Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) in 2022.

It was established with the ambition of providing the workforce in Lancashire and South Cumbria with the knowledge, insight, and tools to respond to the growing health inequalities that health professionals see and respond to both in primary care and across the wider health and care system.

The Academy is seen as one of the key enablers for our wider programme around population health and health inequalities in Lancashire and South Cumbria. It aims to support the delivery of the ICB’s statutory duty to improve outcomes in population health and healthcare and tackle inequalities in outcomes, experience and access.

The Academy aims to be a catalyst for culture change and for the development of a social movement for health across the whole system in Lancashire and South Cumbria.

The ambition is that the Academy develops to become an initiative that benefits all partners across the system, that compliments existing learning opportunities provided by other partners, and that supports the development of the necessary knowledge, skills and understanding across the workforce to help improve population health and address health inequalities across Lancashire and South Cumbria.

The Academy aims to provide a place where skills, knowledge and innovative ideas can be shared and where colleagues can learn from each other and from work being undertaken across the country and internationally.

Additionally, the Academy promotes the need for effective evaluation, meaningful community engagement and empowerment and the adoption of quality improvement methodology in work designed to tackle unwarranted variation and address health inequalities.

The Academy seeks to do this via a Build, Enable and Connect model:

Build – population health capacity within the workforce via training, learning and development.
Enable – collaboration by bringing people together to share best practice, inspirational ideas and learning to drive improvements in health equity and building communities of practice.
Connect – people to other population health learning opportunities that are happening in our region by signposting and advertising to partner agency training.

The Academy has, to date, delivered or facilitated the following programmes and training opportunities:
Core20PLUS workshops in July and November 2022
Best Practice sessions (from February 2023)
National Association of Primary Care (NAPC) CARE Programme (from April 2023)
Population Health Leadership Development Programme (from May 2022)
Primary Care/Population Health Symposium (June 2023)
Blood Pressure and Hypertension workshop (in partnership with Cumbria and Lancashire Public Health Collaborative) (September 2023)

Visit our Activities section for more information about what has been achieved by the Academy - LSC Integrated Care Board :: Activities (icb.nhs.uk)

The Academy is managed and delivered by the Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB Population Health Team.

Elements of the programme are delivered with a range of other stakeholders including, amongst others, the Lancashire and South Cumbria Training Hub, Lancashire and Cumbria Public Health Collaborative, the NHS NW Leadership Academy, the National Association of Primary Care and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID).

The Academy has also been working in partnership with Active Lancashire and champions in NHS Trusts to promote, facilitate and deliver personalised care training across Lancashire and South Cumbria. This currently includes the delivery of training on Make Every Contact Count (MECC), Patient Activation Measure (PAMS), Shared Decision Making (SDM) and Health Coaching training.