With public health as a central part of NHS England’s Long Term Plan, innovations that work to build social capital and aim to reduce the burden on primary care are critical to success. This visit to Live Well Greenwich offered Q members the opportunity to observe some of these approaches in action, as well as hear the host’s candid experiences of the highs and lows of implementation.

Why Live Well Greenwich?

Across the UK, people are living longer, but increasing number of the extra years are spent living in poorer health, often with multiple chronic diseases, and the borough of Greenwich is no exception. Live Well is an initiative developed by the public health team in the Royal Borough of Greenwich in partnership with a number of local organisations, including Charlton Athletic football club. Currently receiving funding from the Health Foundation, the programme is conducting an evaluation to understand the impact on both primary care attendance rates and the type of attendance.

On this Q Visit members learnt about how Live Well Greenwich has put prevention at the heart of their work, utilising key partners across the policies and decisions it makes and the services it provides.

The day started with networking and a welcome from a Cabinet Minister over coffee, followed by a visit to the Extra Time Hub to learn about participation and prevention in practice. Over lunch there was an opportunity to meet Live Well Coaches and Live Well Champions and a presentation of video case studies. Finally, there was an exercise to get members thinking about delivering social prescribing in practice. Throughout the day, members were invited to share their own experiences and approaches to community development and social prescribing.

Aims and objectives

The aim of this visit was to showcase the approach taken to population, community and individual level prevention within Greenwich and how that may be applied to members own organisations.

By the end of the session members:

• Understood the approach to population health and prevention taken by agencies within Greenwich
• Met those involved in delivering social prescribing at scale and understood how this has been achieved
• Reflect, with other Q members, on how social prescribing might be developed within their own area

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