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Promoting heart healthy communities
We asked some of our community partners how we can work in partnership to build heart healthy communities in Torbay
Who needs to be involved?
- Everyone!
- Communities, and the individuals, support groups and organisations
- NHS services – primary care, hospital teams, social prescribers
- Statutory services
- Public Health
- The education sector – not just nurseries and schools but their students too
- Businesses including supermarkets and workplaces
- Partners, families, carers and care managers – everyone who is part of a individual's support system
Where do we need to be?
- Outreach needs to go where the people who need it are, whether that’s a pub or a farmers’ market
- Accessible places within the community and voluntary sector that are co-designed with the people that use them, such as community cafes, church halls and village greens
- Make better use of statutory locations like job centres and antenatal clinics
- Go out to businesses and workplaces, from supermarkets and boatyards to the hospitality and tourism industry
What should we be doing?
- Target interventions to reach people who are the most vulnerable, at-risk and unable to access traditional services
- Focus on education to increase awareness and understanding of heart health, healthy behaviours and symptoms of disease at an earlier age
- Improve accessibility - for example use chronic condition reviews to talk about heart health
- Make activities inclusive for all ages – heart health is important for all of us, it doesn’t start at 65
- Increase peer support for heart disease and other conditions through expanding existing support groups and growing new ones
- Co-ordinate our communications on heart health so we all give the same messages about preventing and detecting heart disease
How do we make this happen?
- Work together and bring people together, through involvement and networking between professionals, the community sector and the public
- Increase the number of free activities that support healthy hearts locally
- More proactive support from clinicians for patients to attend support and community groups
- Make every contact count - to increase awareness of heart health and signpost to activities that promote healthy hearts
- Another key message from those we spoke to was the importance of enjoying looking after our hearts: whatever we do, make it fun!
Community means different things to different people, at different times in our lives. It can be our neighbourhood, our school, our work, our extended family, our friends and peer group, or a group sharing a hobby, interest or belief. We are thinking about communities in the widest sense and have taken the ideas shared by our partners to inform the recommendations in our report.