What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme?

NHS reform focuses on the importance of place-based delivery and community-based approaches. For Gateshead Outer West, this means the PCN patient population of just over 31,000, with mixed deprivation levels and in a semi-rural location. Particular challenges include services often not being close to the population who need it the most, and digital poverty and digital literacy being recognised barriers to improving health outcomes. This has been evidenced through patient engagement and confirmed the limited impact and effectiveness of digital solutions as pathways often lack hands-on support for patients.

There are the beginnings of working between health, local government and third sector providers. But there remains a lack of clarity for local people on how to improve their health and well-being. Specific challenges will likely include brokering effective relationships, breaking down barriers between sector and providers and building shared organisations that have the capacity and resource to make a difference.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The start of a local partnership focusing on bridging any digital divides and building relationships between organisations who promote health through clinical and non-clinical approaches. Long term, through co-design with local people, it will bring health/wellbeing resources to local venues, equip local people to better manage their health and offer peer support in the use of digital approaches. This is building on co-design work that has already been done in the PCN on patient access and the digital interface.

We will aim to map all local providers, in particular looking at how to bring digital hardware and training to the people who need it most. The production of a business case will act as a ‘magnet for change’ by identifying funding sources to allow our place-based partnership (PBP) to operate. A place-base partnership brand will be developed for partner organisation use to encourage collaboration rather than competition.

How will the project be delivered?

The Project will be led by the PCN Clinical Director and assisted by the Health Equity team from Edberts House, a Gateshead based charity led by a GenQ Fellow, with a strong reputation for community development and social prescribing, working with the NHSE Personalised Care Team.  Utilising combined knowledge of local authority and VCSE provision, we will map and build relationships across our area, using an EBCD approach, actively listening to professionals and community members to create a network of accessible connecting places. This will give us a PBP through which we can support health and wellbeing in the community, and also build our qualitative knowledge of the needs of our population.  Matched with quantitative data, it will give us a fuller picture of how we can create an effective population health management plan and community training needs assessment.  We will establish clear project governance prior to commencement.

How is your project going to share learning?

We will document our processes and our experience so that others can learn from what we achieve. We have no doubt that this will be a challenging project and we will be transparent in sharing things that did not work as well as things that did. We will use the specialist interest group spaces to do this, in particular Bridging Networks and Primary care.

We will record all learning in a variety of ways including maximising online content to allow us to share learning widely. We will ensure that our project team are committed from the start to personally feeding back their learning in a number of ways including case studies, workshops and drop-in learning sessions. We believe that local dissemination will allow our model to be tested and we have already made contact with our neighbouring PCNs who have reacted positively to the proposed project.