Delivering an innovative approach to community engagement to shape health strategy

Background

The Hounslow Borough Based Partnership (BBP) aims to launch the first local women’s health strategy in 2025. To ensure the strategy is evidenced-based led, the Hounslow Public Health team wished to engage with local women to better understand their health concerns and priorities.

Aims

To deliver a day of community-based engagement on Wednesday 22 May, divided into two parts:

1. BBP colleagues to deliver community engagement to a minimum of 120 women (10am – 12pm) via health surveys.
2. Hounslow Public Health Team to host a public women’s health event (1pm – 4pm) designed to attract more than 100 local residents.

Objectives

To deliver the above engagement aims, the project team needed to:

• Align community engagement with International Day of Action for Women’s Health and deliver activity on Wednesday 22 October.
• Recruit a minimum of 35 colleague volunteers to deliver the community-based engagement for two hours at six localities across the borough (high deprivation areas based on CORE20 data).
• Align the feedback survey with the behavioural insights team to ensure the answers could be thematically analysed and published at the afternoon public women’s health event.
• Develop a communications plan to recruit volunteers and promote the public engagement event.
• Create a marketplace at the women’s health event by hosting a minimum of 15 health and care stallholders.

Target Audience  

• Community-based Engagement

Women aged 18 years and over from all demographics across the borough, but with a primary focus on localities in areas with high levels of deprivation.

• Women’s Health Event

All demographics (all genders, backgrounds, and ages. Promotion highlighted keynote speakers and their health or wellbeing specialism i.e., lead gynaecologist, residents with specific lived health experiences).   

Strategic output

• Communications Plan

To devise an overarching BBP Communications Plan that was supported by all partner organisations communications teams, with primary focus on:

• Recruiting a minimum of 35 BBP colleague volunteers

• 110 Eventbrite bookings for the women’s health event

• Surveys Production

To devise a survey that would generate over ended responses, by asking the following questions:

• Thinking about health and wellbeing , what is the first thing that comes to your mind?  

• What specific health issues have you personally faced?  

• Can you share any challenges you might have faced while accessing NHS services or support?  

• Can you share any positive experiences you have had while accessing NHS services or support?  

• Thinking about health and wellbeing of women in your family, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?  

• What are the specific health issues that women in your family have faced?  

• Can you share any challenges that women in your family might have faced while accessing NHS services or support? 

• Can you share any positive experiences that women in your family have had while accessing NHS services or support? 

• Engaged volunteers

To ensure all volunteers felt confident to deliver community-based engagement, each one received:

• An engagement brief three days prior to the event, highlighting aims, surveys questions, delivery approaches, a how-to-guide on feedback capturing, designated locality, a team volunteer lead and a partner to deliver the engagement with on the day.
• A women’s health branded t-shirt for the two-hour activity
• An icebreaker on the day (200 single stem Gerbera flowers were divided across the teams, to enable each volunteer to hand out a single stem flower to the women they approached). 

• Real-time thematical analysis

All feedback from the surveys were uploaded via Microsoft forms at the six unique locations, members of the Public Health team then accessed the live data and thematically analysed. Findings were summarised and shared with attendees at women’s health event (that afternoon).

Evaluation outcomes

• 35 colleagues volunteered their time to support community-based engagement from across the BBP.
• 145 women engaged in the morning health surveys.
• Approximately 90 people attended the afternoon event (110 people booked tickets via Eventbrite, which was the maximum allocated event figure).
• Data analysis from conversations with women on the day will help underpin the planning of the women’s health strategy. Key feedback on the day highlighted:
  1. Accessing health services can cause issues at times
  2. Clear and accurate health communications from primary care, hospital services, health providers and front line workers is essential

 Reflections

This was the first-time, a health project designed targeted community-based engagement though the utilisation of BBP colleagues for strategy development. This planned approach enabled colleagues to speak with multiple women in the community and hear first-hand about their personal positive, and negative, health and wellbeing experiences. As well as learning about the women in their families, household, and networks experiences of accessing healthcare services in Hounslow.

The engagement exercise gave BBP colleagues who don’t usually work in the community a real sense of appreciation for purposeful engagement and how important resident feedback is when helping to shape policy and practice.