All Our Health: New Tools to Help Boost Your Prevention Impact

There are clear shared aims between the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) and Public Health England (PHE) around ensuring that health and care professionals have the skills and confidence to prevent illness, protect health and promote wellbeing in their day to day practice.

As nurses working in the community, you will be making a vital contribution to this agenda through working directly with individuals, families, carers, communities and populations to improve their health and wellbeing and supporting people to manage their own care where possible.

Earlier this year, PHE carried out some research into what the public expect when it comes to advice on preventing ill health. This confirmed that while they may not always ask for it, people expect to be offered support on a range of different issues and they have a high level of trust in advice they receive from health professionals, and nurses in particular.

We know that in most health and care contexts, time is often limited. And this is especially true for nurses working in the community and primary care settings, dealing with a complex and demanding range of situations every day. We realise how important it is to have easy access to information and evidence that can help you make the maximum difference through your role, particularly when it comes to dealing with the pressing challenges facing public health.

All Our Health

PHE’s All Our Health framework helps professionals embed prevention within their work by providing trusted advice and guidance on 26 different public health topics such as smoking, alcohol misuse, antimicrobial resistance and cardiovascular disease prevention. Developed by PHE experts, it supports prevention priorities, including those detailed in the NHS Long Term Plan, to help reduce health inequalities and premature morbidity and mortality.

PHE’s All Our Health framework is an excellent resource for nurses working in the community as it provides:

• the latest evidence-based information about health improvement and illness prevention in a format that is easy to access, read and understand.
• topic specific information and advice for how you can find out the scale of issues locally and tools to help you measure and evaluate the impact of your work.
• tips on having brief conversations, health coaching and motivational interviewing.
• trusted signposting to sources of support for the public on ways for them to protect, maintain and improve their health outcomes.

E-learning Sessions

The All Our Health framework provides opportunities and resources accessible to all health care professionals to teach, learn and understand their role in promoting health and preventing ill health. And these resources have been made even more user friendly with the launch of the new All Our Health bite-sized e-learning sessions. The first 12 e-learning sessions are available now and there will be 11 more sessions published over the coming year.

These are quick and practical tools that can be used to refresh your knowledge on key public health issues and find out where you can learn more about tackling them through your work in community and primary care settings.

The sessions are designed to be used flexibly, making it easier for you to get advice that will help you make a difference in your practice alongside the busy demands of your day-to-day role. Key information and advice can be accessed in just a few minutes, making learning more accessible to fit around your other commitments. You can dip in and out of the content as and when you need it.

This information isn’t just relevant for nurses, it is useful for people working across the health and care sector, from frontline practitioners to managers and strategic leaders. Completing the sessions can also count towards continuing professional development and could also be used for revalidation purposes.

Using the All Our Health resources will help you better understand the transformative impact that prevention can have and how you can do even more to prevent illness, protect health and promote wellbeing.

By further embedding prevention in your day to day work, you can have a huge impact and help more people live longer, healthier lives.

To access the new All Our Health e-learning sessions, click here.

Professor Jamie Waterall, National Lead for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention & Deputy Chief Nurse at Public Health England

Dr Crystal Oldman CBE, Chief Executive of the Queen’s Nursing Institute

Photo by Emma Simpson on Unsplash.