Celebrating success: a local perspective, NHS Health Check, East of England

The NHS Health Check programme is commissioned by 13 local authorities across the two PHE centres of Anglia and Essex, and South Midlands and Hertfordshire. The commissioners are part of an active and collaborative network where local initiatives and challenges are shared and learned from.

Suffolk County Council has commissioned Enable East to deliver a pilot programme of NHS Health Checks in Suffolk and Waveney with a variety of outreach locations including areas of high deprivation, work places and the community. The main targets are people with diagnosed mental health conditions and learning disabilities, other groups such as the homeless, asylum seekers and members of the travelling community will also be offered a health check as part of the pilot. The local authority has implemented the NHS Health Check widget on the council’s health and wellbeing webpage where people can find out about the programme and view a short video which is available in English, Bengali, Lithuanian, Polish and Portuguese.

Norfolk County Council is running an NHS Health Check awareness-raising campaign called ‘Precious moments’ for the second year running. The key message for the campaign is to look after your health, so you ‘don’t miss out on life’s precious moments’, such as a new baby, graduation, wedding, or a holiday of a lifetime. The campaign was launched by the council’s chairman and a group of fire-fighters who had a health check. The aim is to reach Norfolk residents through digital, radio and bus advertising and posters at petrol stations and convenience stores. View the Precious moments poster here.

Luton Borough Council has commissioned Live Well Luton to deliver NHS Health Checks to hard-to-reach communities where language is a significant barrier. The people offered an NHS Health Check are mainly Bangladeshi, Polish, Urdu-speaking and gypsy communities. Recently Live Well Luton has also started a new work place health check for employees in businesses like Easyjet, Vauxhall and HMRC who are Luton residents.

Northamptonshire County Council has developed a two-phase model for the delivery of NHS Health Checks in 2014-15. This involves having a local enhanced service arrangement with individual GP practices, supplemented by contracts with the three newly formed GP federations to promote collaborative working among practices and to deliver the programme in the community and workplace. The GP federations also target hard-to-reach groups by developing links with local community organisations.