Q Exchange
Our People, Our Planet: an event for our biggest challenge
- Proposal
- 2024
Meet the team
Also:
- Nicola Lowe - Somerset NHS Foundation Trust
- Lynsey Butterworth - Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
- Rebekah Tudor - The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust
What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can we improve across system boundaries?
The NHS saves lives. The NHS also pollutes the air we breathe and contributes to the climate crisis. Air pollution causes potentially avoidable deaths, it’s linked to heart disease, stroke and lung cancer. Climate change leads to more frequent heatwaves, flooding and the potential spread of infectious diseases to the UK. The NHS is part of the problem, but also the solution.
Work is happening across systems to deliver a Net Zero healthcare system by 2040. However, there is no large-scale NHS event for people across these systems (often working on similar, or replicable initiatives) to collaborate and learn from each other. Actionable, shared learning would speed up progress and reduce the duplication of resources.
So far over 1,000 people from across 40+ UK health systems and internationally, have collaborated in the first two iterations of our week-long events held in 2022 and 2023.
This demonstrates interest, importance and the potential to go further, together.
What does your project aim to achieve?
Focusing on the pressing challenges of decarbonising medicine, clinical pathways and care delivery, we aim to create a week-long event for people to collaborate in tackling these complex problems:
- Give a platform to voices (patients, services users and the wider community served by the NHS) highlighting the need for this work and its links to better care and reduced waste
- Networking to speed up work that’s stalling, or help get it off the ground
- Sessions to develop skills, e.g. improvement methods and carbon modelling
- Showcase improvement work and innovations being developed, with implementation advice
- Workshops for participants to engage in live problem-solving
- Go beyond the toolkit; have opportunities for people working on similar initiatives to meet, share challenges and progress together
Our aim is to explosively grow a network of individuals across systems that can snowball, and propel the Net Zero agenda forward.
How will the project be delivered?
We have pre-established relationships with influential partners with wide-reaching networks, who have been involved in our small-scale events. This includes Greener NHS, the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, influential members of the Q Community, NHS Elect and Hexitime. Our network of previous attendees includes over 1,000 individuals from 40 trusts or organisations from across all care sectors.
Crucially, we will bring patient and service user voices into the planning, organisation and participation (as we have done before).
Phase 1 (Months 1-3)
- Regroup organising team
- Define clear event goals, themes, messages
- Secure key partners and confirm suitable virtual hosting space on Remo
- Create marketing and communications strategy
Phase 2 (Months 4-7)
- Execute communications to identify presenters and speakers
- Activate marketing strategy driving registrations
- Improve event details based on early feedback
Phase 3 (Months 7-10):
- Plan content with partners
- Develop carbon tool for event mitigation
- Continue marketing
Phase 4 (Month 11-12):
- Host event
- Distribute resources to support work nationally
- Gather feedback
- Measure ROI
How is your project going to share learning?
The project’s main aim is to share learning and spread knowledge across system boundaries.
The event will be available for anyone involved in health and care to attend.
We have already built up a collection of resources from previous years (accessible here) that we will scale-up. New, improved resources will be available for free to Q members and beyond. We will also work with local communications teams to develop resources that can be locally embedded within system intranets (embedding them into places where people usually go to find work resources) as well as open websites.
We are excited by our ambition to also make this the NHS’ first carbon neutral conference and are dedicating funding to enable this innovative approach. We will work with experts to calculate carbon generated by this event & engage the community attending to mitigate the emissions generated, taking collective action during and after the event.
How you can contribute
- Reactions!
- Let us know if you would like to be involved in planning
- Let us know if you are working on initiatives you’d like to share at the event
- Let us know if you are interested in attending and being added to our database
- Identifying potential collaborators
- Identifying any physical or virtual hosting spaces you feel would work best
- Spreading the word!
- Contributing ideas to improve and refine this idea
- Ideas to keep this low-carbon, and how we can mitigate the carbon generated by running this
Plan timeline
| 1 Sep 2024 | Hold a kickoff meeting to align on objectives. |
|---|---|
| 2 Sep 2024 | Define clear event goals, themes, and messages |
| 9 Sep 2024 | Identify partners and initiate discussions for interactive workshops/patient-led sessions |
| 1 Oct 2024 | Draft communications, begin outreach to potential presenters and community |
| 13 Oct 2024 | Publicise call for speakers |
| 31 Oct 2024 | Confirm suitable virtual hosting space on Remo or alternative platform |
| 29 Nov 2024 | Ensure technical setup aligns with low/no carbon objectives (due diligence) |
| 30 Nov 2024 | Finalise event agenda, speakers and landing page for event registration |
| 19 Dec 2024 | Finalise marketing and communications strategy, develop initial promotional content |
| 20 Dec 2024 | Initiate marketing strategy to drive registrations |
| 1 Jan 2025 | Develop carbon tool for event mitigation, continue marketing efforts |
| 1 Feb 2025 | Monitor registration numbers and adjust strategy accordingly |
| 28 Mar 2025 | Test carbon tool for effectiveness and accuracy, design interactive widget |
| 14 Apr 2025 | Review and finalise all event preparations, host event |
| 15 Apr 2025 | Monitor and promote carbon footprint mitigation efforts |
| 30 May 2025 | Evaluate event success and measure ROI |
| 31 May 2025 | Compile a comprehensive report detailing outcomes and achievements |
| 28 Jun 2025 | Share all resources and outcomes on Q with members |
Comments
Catherine Richards 15 Mar 2024
This is such an important initiative! The Centre of Sustainable Healthcare has been involved and supported the event over the past 2 years, the team are incredible and with the support of Q exchange to develop this further I believe it will make a real impact in supporting the healthcare sector to deliver Net Zero. The events have demonstrated just how much passion and knowledge there already is in developing sustainable healthcare services, this initiative supports key networking and further sharing of knowledge of how to practically improve services for a more sustainable future!
Lorraine Catt 29 Feb 2024
This is a really important initiative. I attended the event last year and it was well run and a fabulous way to share learning.
Katie Angus 1 Mar 2024
Thanks Lorraine, would love to have you come back to an even better, more effective event week next time!
Clare Ginnis 28 Feb 2024
A fantastic idea and fits so well with the current challenges facing the NHS and the planet! We have clinical teams that want to make changes to reduce carbon footprint, but we need support with practical tools to measure the impact of these changes and partnerships to champion and support new greener ways of working. This could make a real difference to clinical teams trying to have an impact
Katie Angus 1 Mar 2024
Thanks Claire, and for your involvement as a contributor and advocate for last year's event. I know there are pockets of people and teams really wanting to/already doing this work, and there are so many tools and toolkits out there. What I hope we can do is something practical like workshops to get people comfortable and confident with some of them "live". I'd also really like to use Hexitime for example as a collaboration enabler, so those who have "done it" can speak to those "doing it"... and get incentivised for doing so. I'm so conscious of the demands on everyone's time and keen to try new approaches.
LYNSEY BUTTERWORTH 27 Feb 2024
Such inspirational work to be able to bring people together to share their work to ensure we are protecting our planet for the future. Can't wait to be part of this for 2024 & build upon the amazing successes of 2023 & 2022!
Katie Angus 1 Mar 2024
Thanks Lynsey, it would be brilliant to be able to count on your support again. Couldn't do it without you!
Helen Tucker 26 Feb 2024
Your event last year was very impressive. Great to keep up the interest and momentum on such a vital topic. Good luck!
Katie Angus 1 Mar 2024
Thanks Helen, and for all your support and advocacy last year. Momentum matters so much! I feel that a big part of this idea is to sustain that and also reward and celebrate the work that isn't always surfaced.
Evelyn Prodger 26 Feb 2024
This is an excellent proposal and will appeal to a lot of people across the whole range of health and social care services who are grappling with this.
Happy to share information via the Community Hospitals SIG.
Good luck!
Katie Angus 1 Mar 2024
Thanks Evelyn if you could kindly share information via the Community Hospitals SIG. This is all about bringing the entire system together as much as humanly possible! I'd also love to have social care more represented, I have posted a link to a great idea listed as on this Q exchange for anyone scrolling the comments here.
The Care Home Carbon Insight Tool https://q.health.org.uk/idea/2024/the-care-home-carbon-insight-tool-learning-from-primary-care/
Veronica Hanlon 26 Feb 2024
Dear Katie,
Your project proposal is very topical and very timely! I am currently working on the development of a quality and patient safety competency framework for the Irish health service (which could be used and adapted for other jurisdictions) and during the co-design process , 'sustainability and climate change' was identified as a topic that it worthy of it's own domain within the framework. We are now beginning the process of identifying the key competencies required by students, staff, leaders and patient partners on this topic and would love to be linked into your network and your project. We hope to have the framework completed and ready for sharing by the end of 2024.
Katie Angus 1 Mar 2024
Thanks Veronica, that is so interesting and powerful to hear. Public voices championing the need for greener care will continue to get louder and can / will be so influential in holding the NHS and other institutions to account in regards to emissions and impact on the health crisis. Staff voices are also loud, at King's 9/10 staff think sustainability needs to be prioritised (survey of 250), but as we know, its a grand challenge...the first step is bringing us together!
Hilda Campbell MBE 25 Feb 2024
Having been involved in delivering a session for last year's series of events, I think this is a great idea. To build the momentum to sustain and build the networks following the event to continue sharing and learning together. e.g. I am not sure how many have went on to use the Jigsaw Lid engagement tool we designed specifically for last year's event, a simple idea which can help engage many stakeholders in identifying the pieces within their control.
A challenge can often be more ideas and resources come at us than we have time to learn and adopt, using the series of events to bring a focus to a year long piece of work learning and sharing together I think would be really helpful for leaving a lasting legacy and increased adoption and imbedding of learning. There is so much good practice out there, this would offer a focus to help share that.
Happy to be involved
Kind regards
Hilda
Katie Angus 26 Feb 2024
Dear Hilda,
Thank you for your enthusiastic response! Your insights from last year's events are invaluable, and we'd be thrilled to have your support for an upcoming series.
I've also hyperlinked the Jigsaw tool here for people engaging with this idea to access in case interested.
Your point about the challenge of managing ideas and resources rings true. As someone who has delivered carbon reduction projects at the trust-level it can sometimes feel overwhelming and isolating. Collaboration and shared experiences can make a significant difference in navigating such challenges.
Thank you again, Katie
Robin Davis 25 Feb 2024
A great idea and initiative. A really important area of cross system working and sharing that can make a real difference. Very happy to help plan, promote and spread the word.
Katie Angus 26 Feb 2024
Thanks Rob! Your support and expertise would be fantastic.
John Lodge 24 Feb 2024
Having met and worked with the dream team behind this - I just know this will take off and make a positive impact. I look forward to monitoring the progress of this one!
Katie Angus 26 Feb 2024
Thanks John!
Comments are now closed for this post.