What is the positive change that has emerged through new collaborations or partnerships during Covid-19 that your project is going to embed?

We started as a project to supply PPE to all frontline care staff in Rugby and beyond. This brought 2 local charities the Benn Partnership and the Friends of St Cross together.  This  story of our local and indeed sub-regional success is on our website ;

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Having seen the community and varied groups working so well together to help alleviate the COVID 19 problems we have initiated our Unlocking Health project to improve health by improving Health Literacy.

We have had a stakeholder event on the 11th of September, and have started to distribute our survey document to establish the health status and health needs of our local community.

The Stakeholder event captures so much learning about community cohesion, adaptation, and resilience.  The event gave the project team have a key set of actions and aims.

What does your project aim to achieve?

We wish to improve the health of our local community which is the most deprived ward in Rugby.  The COVID 19 pandemic spotlighted problems with healthcare, social care, housing, and education that already existed. The joined-up community working that mitigated the worst impact of COVID 19 will be our foundation of our multi-stranded approach to improving health literacy for individuals, families, and communities. We will aim to deliver the aims outlined at our Stakeholder Event;

• Empowering local staff to work together to meet local need
• Enhancing Collaborative working
• Develop a website and webinars (Multilingual)
• Promote exercise, healthy diets, and psychological well being
• Develop a Health Hub to deliver key aims and lead on learning and development
• Recruit, train, and support local Health Mentors
• To develop the concept of Health Stewardship

How will the project be delivered?

We have had our key stakeholder event already. We have a survey in progress across our communities.

We will use these inputs to create a health literacy improvement strategy and move on to provide a variety of learning approaches.

We will recruit, train, and develop HEALTH MENTORS

We have already identified Maturity Onset Diabetes Mellitus and Prescribed Opiate dependence as two areas of special interest.  We have involved the Police as Crime is a local concern.

Primary Care benefits would include the progressive elimination of overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

A community-led steering group will oversee the project.

The project team will develop a delivery strategy, fundraising, and budget functions.  (They have had experience) Project Governance responsibility and education relating to it will be a project team responsibility

How is your project going to share learning?

We have just set up our website and will develop online information initially followed by resources from our various educational approaches.

We will host visits from other teams when possible

We will participate in conferences either virtual or live.

We will publish our findings, our methodology, and our learning

We will promote adaptation, partnership, engagement in all our work with partners agencies, and through our health mentors.