Right Care, Right Place, Right Time - Health and Wellbeing; Empowering Citizens

Sláintecare hosted our fifth Right Care, Right Place, Right Time, Webinar - ‘‘Health and Wellbeing – Empowering Citizens’ on 22 October 2020.

The theme of our fifth webinar was ‘Health and Wellbeing – Empowering Citizens’. This webinar shared stories of projects which have a focus on prevention and on empowering people and communities to be more engaged in their own health and wellbeing. The innovation and best practice that these projects represent will be of great value to the work underway in every county to implement Healthy Ireland as a key part of the Sláintecare vision.

Through this webinar, we profiled projects which are funded through the Sláintecare Integration Fund:

• SmokeFree Start:

This project is a joint initiative between Tobacco Free Ireland Programme and the National Women and Infant Health Programme, which will develop capacity and capability in a maternity setting to better diagnose and treat smoking during pregnancy.

Martina Blake, National Lead Tobacco Free Ireland Programme

• Supporting Pregnant Women to Quit and Stay Quit:

Run by Southeast Community Healthcare, this project is helping everyone involved in the journey of the pregnant woman to stop smoking. This project has established an integrated smoking cessation service for pregnant women and their families.

-Kate Cassidy, Senior Health Promotion Officer, South East Community Healthcare

• Living Well:

The Living Well Programme is a series of online workshops designed to offer support to people living with Long Term Health Conditions (LTHCs). It is designed for adults, aged 18 years and over, who are living with one or more long-term health conditions (for example: asthma, COPD, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, depression, Crohn’s disease), or for carers of someone with a long-term health condition.

-Maeve McKeon, Self-Management Support Co-ordinator, CHO Area 1

• Patient Self-Management of Chronic Disease project:

The ICGP propose to develop and deliver an evidence-based education package to GPs and practice nurses on “Patient self-management of chronic disease”. GPs are best placed to empower patients in self-management of their chronic conditions. Evidence shows that training GPs to help patients change their lifestyle makes a difference. The direct impact of this proposal will be on patient empowerment and ability to self-manage their condition.

-Nick Fenlon, ICGP

• HealthEIR: A Journey to Improving Health and Wellbeing Through Community-Based Social Self-Care:

The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, in collaboration with the National College of Art and Design, University College Dublin, and the TU Dublin School of Creative Arts are delivering this project. HealthEir aims to optimise the delivery of brief interventions in primary care by integrating innovative technology with a human-centred care delivery model. A priority action of the Healthy Ireland implementation plan is to implement a brief-intervention based health behaviour change framework via the Making Every Contact Count initiative (MECC). This initiative aims to leverage the 30 million annual contacts with the healthcare system by asking every health worker to include preventative lifestyle interventions in interactions with patients.

-Dr Michelle Flood, Senior Lecturer, RCSI

• LGBT Champions Programme:

The programme is designed to increase the visibility and awareness of LGBT+ issues at all levels within the healthcare systems, so that older people encountering services know that they can be open and comfortable being who they are, improving the relationships with care providers, improving experience of care settings, and enabling more positive health and wellbeing outcomes.

-James O’Hagan, LGBT Champions Programme Manager

This webinar was the fifth in a series of webinars and is being hosted by Sláintecare in partnership with HSE and IFIC Ireland.