The Academy worked in partnership with the King’s Fund in 2022/23 to co-produce and deliver a successful population health leadership development programme for 44 leaders from primary care and from our place-based teams across Lancashire and South Cumbria.

The programme covered various topics including population health, population health management (PHM), health inequalities, community engagement and empowerment, social movement, the value of lived experience, quality improvement, trauma-informed practice,  participative leadership (i.e. the Art of Hosting) and compassionate leadership. The programme aimed to provide participants with practical approaches to improve population health and address health inequalities within their neighbourhoods and involved the development and delivery of a project directly relevant to the needs of their community. The programme involved input from a range of local, national and international guest speakers.

Further information about the initial programme can be found in the following articles and videos:   

• King’s Fund Long Read: Developing primary care leadership for population health and equity: how to begin by Durka Dougall, Andy Knox, Toby Lewis, Patricia Boyle, Linden Burgess and Mark Wight 
• Article in Healthcare Leader magazine: How systems are leading on health equity by Saša Janković
• YouTube video: Lancashire and South Cumbria Leadership academy participant interviews

The programme has been redesigned taking account of feedback from the original cohort. A new programme started in September 2023 and includes 50 leaders from primary care, the acute Trusts, the mental health Trust and the Integrated Care Board. The revised programme has been designed by the ICB population health team and is delivered with administrative support from the NHS NW Leadership Academy.

The programme is delivered in person at the Health Innovation Campus at Lancaster University.

It is anticipated  that a further presentation of the leadership development programme will be held in September 2024.

Further information about the leadership development programme can be obtained from healthierlsc.population.health@nhs.net.

The Lancashire and South Cumbria Population Health Academy has been running a series of Best Practice sessions since February 2023.

The Best Practice sessions are a programme of monthly lunchtime virtual meetings aimed at showcasing the many examples of good work relating to population health and health equity that is going on across Lancashire and South Cumbria.

Each month a guest speaker from health, local government or the voluntary sector is invited to talk about their work - the what, why and the how – followed by an opportunity for the audience to ask questions, explore the work further and make links with colleagues with similar interests. 

These sessions aim to be informal, inspirational and packed full of practical ideas to help build a movement to improve population health and address health equity across the Lancashire and South Cumbria. The aim is to establish a vibrant community of practice to support our collective aspiration to deliver more equitable access, experience and outcomes for all sections of our population.

The intended audience of these sessions is anyone who has an interest in population health and health equity, who is thinking about starting a project or is already working on a project of their own and who may want some guidance and support. These sessions will appeal to NHS colleagues (including those working in primary care, acute settings, community services and mental health) and colleagues working in local authorities, social care, public health and the voluntary sector.

We welcome suggestions of best practice session topics. If you have been working to address health inequalities in Lancashire and South Cumbria and have examples of good practice that you want to share, challenges that you have overcome or even things that have not worked out as planned which others can learn from, please contact [add email] to arrange to present at a future best practice session. We would especially welcome contributions from colleagues working in health, social care, public health, local authorities and the VSCFE sector.

The videos and learning resources from previous best practice sessions can be found in the learning resources page.

The Academy held its first Population Health Masterclass at the Health Innovation campus at Lancaster University on 16 November 2023. This Masterclass was for the graduates of last year’s Academy Leadership Development Programme.

The Masterclass included presentations from Pedro Delgado (Vice President of the Institute of Healthcare Improvement) who talked about practical examples of quality improvement related to health inequity and Professor Ailsa Brotherton (Executive Director of Improvement, Research and Innovation at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, an Honorary Professor at UCLAN and an Honorary Clinical Professor at Lancaster University) who discussed quality improvement approaches in Lancashire and South Cumbria, the role of system leaders and her work on the Engineering Better Care project. Helen McArthur (Associate Director of Population Health, Lancashire and East Lancashire), Claire Niebieski (Head of Population Health, North Lancashire) and Lizzie Holmes (Lancaster Medical Practice) also gave a presentation on some of the practical work undertaken to successfully deliver Enhanced Health Checks in Lancaster.

The participants also had a bonfire of failure where they reflected on actions that had been taken to address health inequalities that had not worked, learned from their experiences and discussed how they could use those lessons to continue to learn and improve the projects they were currently working on to improve population health and address health inequalities in their communities.

The Academy works closely with the Lancashire and South Cumbria Public Health Collaborative to promote its continuing professional development opportunities which are relevant to people working in the wider system across Lancashire and South Cumbria.

This has, to date, included the following sessions:

Climate change health and emergency in March 2023. 

John Astbury, Consultant in Communicable Disease Control at the UKHSA discussed the causes and effects of climate change and also the measures needed to adapt to the increased temperatures and increasingly violent weather patterns as well as the effect on the natural world and diseases.

This was followed by a presentation by Cat Pinho-Gomes, NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Public Health Medicine at the Institute of Health Informatics, University College London, who covered the key role that public health professionals play in addressing the climate and health emergency and illustrated, with practical examples, how environmental change and sustainability can be embedded in routine public health projects.

Migrant health in October 2023

Rebecca Joy Novell, Senior Manager, Lancashire Refugee Integration Team and Samara Atassi, Asylum Lead, Lancashire Refugee Integration Team and Co-founder and CEO, Souriyat Across Borders (SAB) presented a session about understanding the needs of refugees and asylum seekers and covered the journey through the resettlement process.

On 20 June, the population health and primary care teams held a joint symposium for approximately 120 primary care leaders at Morecambe Football Club. It provided an opportunity for participants to gain a deeper understanding of health inequalities in Lancashire and South Cumbria.

Dr Andy Knox, associate medical director for population health, gave an inspiring presentation on population health and the work being done in our communities to address health inequalities. Attendees heard from a panel of PCN health inequalities clinical leads about their work and what they have learned through the leadership development programme offered by the LSC Population Health and Health Equity Academy.

A world café approach enabled everyone to have rich discussions on the topic of ‘what is the gift of primary care in improving the health of the communities that we serve and what might we do differently in our places and neighbourhoods if we dared to look through a health equity lens’.

There was excellent feedback from participants on the event. One in particular commented, “it really is the future of working, collaboration and switching things up” and another, that “non-clinician managers got a chance to see how things can be achieved in a non-traditional way and how we get the best from people”.

The afternoon session focused on the impact of cardiovascular disease (CVD) on our population and why this is such an important part of our work to tackle health inequalities. Jeannie Hayhurst, CVD clinical lead for the Cardiac Network, emphasised how successfully diagnosing and optimally managing high blood pressure to the NHSE 77% target could avoid over the next 3 years, an estimated 309 heart attacks and 459 strokes.

Art of hosting techniques were also used to hold a collaborative conversation which concluded with an agreed set of actions that every PCN can take to stop people dying unnecessarily from CVD in Lancashire and South Cumbria.

The event was a fabulous collaborative effort involving the population health team, primary care, the CVD Network and BI colleagues. Thanks to all who helped make it so effective.

The Academy has worked in partnership with the National Association of Primary Care (NAPC), the Lancashire and South Cumbria Training Hub and the Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) to facilitate the delivery of the NAPC CARE Programme.

The CARE programme is a learning and development programme that empowers general practice nurses and other primary healthcare professionals to play a key role in their Primary Care Network (PCN), to shape services based on a population health approach and to strengthen their leadership capabilities. Focusing on wellbeing and building and harnessing resilience, the programme connects primary care professionals and supports joined-up, multi-professional working.

The programme focuses on:

• building personal resilience and wellbeing;
• improving understanding of population health and population health management; and
• developing leadership for system impact.

The CARE programme was originally designed for general practice nurses but has now been made available to the wider primary care team, including pharmacists, physiotherapists, paramedics, practice managers, health and wellbeing coaches, GPs and other health and care professionals.

Further information about the programme can be found here (CARE Programme – NAPC) and any information about recruitment to future local, regional or national cohorts will be circulated via newsletters, networks and the Academy mailing list.