Public Health

Health Education England has worked with others to develop the Population Wellbeing Portal. The portal offers free resources, training and education in population health, wellbeing and prevention. It includes links to e-learning, toolkits, videos, webinars and various publications helping you to expand your knowledge and skills to enable you to influence the health of the population. Topics include alcohol, child health, housing and homeless, oral health, prevention, safeguarding, sexual health, smoking, substance misuse and wellbeing & mental health.

Public Health England’s All Our Health framework is a call to action to all health and care professionals to embed prevention within their day to day practice. Through educational materials, tools and resources, All Our Health helps professionals make an even greater impact in preventing illness, protecting health and promoting wellbeing. The All Our Health e-learning sessions, freely available on the eLfH platform, have been developed to provide a bite-sized introduction to the wide range of topics covered within the All Our Health framework. Topics covered include adult obesity, antimicrobial resistance, best start in life, cardiovascular disease, homelessness, physical activity and social prescribing. Others are under development.

Population Health Intelligence

PHE have developed a series of national training courses to build and develop population health intelligence capacity and capability in local public health systems. The Population health intelligence Training prospectus (November 2018) sets out the range of courses available locally through your PHE Local Knowledge and Intelligence Service (LKIS). This training has been developed to support public health practitioners, including public health analysts, to increase their competency and confidence in using data to drive decision-making. However, the courses are suitable for anyone working in a population health role.
The training available comprises classroom-based courses and e-learning. The e-learning is available via the e-Learning for Healthcare website. the classroom-based courses are delivered locally by your PHE LKIS;

Equality and Diversity
Behaviour change and MECC

The Behaviour Change Development Framework (BCDF) supports system-wide development of the behaviour change skills of the workforce in any setting. It can support individuals in their own behaviour change development as well as help workforce leaders in developing their workforce, whether they manage a team; are responsible for an organisation’s workforce; or responsible for a workforce at a system level. View a webinar [YouTube] to find out more about the framework and toolkit or visit the BCDF website to explore the different elements of the framework and toolkit.

Making Every Contact Count (MECC) – improving lifestyles and reduce health inequalities
Everyone who comes into contact with members of the public and has the opportunity to have a conversation to improve health. MECC encourages those conversations based on behaviour change methodologies (ranging from brief advice, to more advanced behaviour change techniques), empowering healthier lifestyle choices and exploring the wider social determinants that influence health.

In 2017, Royal Society for Public health and PHE launched Everyday Interactions toolkit, a resource to support healthcare professions to record and measure their public health impact.  Working within the MECC agenda, Everyday Interactions aims to further the effect that preventative measures have on improving the public’s health.  In a revised Everyday Interactions report they have updated the 11 impact pathway which include childhood and adult obesity, smoking and tobacco, dementia, falls, mental wellbeing and physical activity. There is also a short, free e-learning programme which supports the toolkit.The e-learning introduces the impact pathways, demonstrates how they work and helps you identity actions which could be incorporated into your practice.

Moving Medicine is an initiative by the Faculty of Sport & Exercise Medicine in partnership with PHE and Sport England. They work with clinicians, hospitals and patients to spread the word about the remarkably positive effects that just a little bit of movement can have on the symptoms of many common diseases. Moving Medicine have a range of consultation guides, tailored for specific conditions and patient age group. The toolkits will support conversations no matter how much (or little) time available.

Self care

Helping patients to help themselves: Self care for minor ailments – an RCGP online learning course.

Supporting Self Care e-learning from e-Learning for Healthcare is designed for healthcare professionals supporting people with long-term conditions. It will help them give people the confidence and skills to take greater control over their own health and wellbeing.

Lifestyle training

A Physical Activity and Lifestyle Toolkit designed by the RCGP in partnership with Sport England, gives primary care professionals the resources they need to provide lifestyle advice.  At the same time a new Active Practice Charter aims to inspire and celebrate GP practices that are taking steps to increase activity and reduce sedentary behaviour in their patients and staff.

Active Conversations is a practical, evidence-based online learning course developed by clinicians, for clinicians that teaches how to have quick, effective and positive conversations that encourage patients to do more physical activity.

Alcohol brief advice

Alcohol Identification and Brief Advice e-learning (Alcohol IBA), helping you to identify those individuals whose drinking might be impacting on their health and delivering simple, structured advice.  (Find out about alcohol related hospital stays in your area using the Health Profiles tool or Local Alcohol Profiles for England

Exercise

Exercise and Health  is a free online course from Peoples-uni – a UK-based charity focused on providing affordable education in Public Health- which aims to encourage us all to perform and evaluate interventions to increase physical activity in our settings. [Rregistration required]

Smoking cessation

Try the training module on how to deliver Very Brief Advice on Smoking devised by the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training.
(Find out the smoking prevalence and number of smoking related deaths in your locality using the Health Profiles tool.)

Nutrition

Nutritank is an information and innovation hub for food, nutrition and lifestyle medicine which aims to  increase nutrition and lifestyle education within medical school curricula. Their Toolbox includes a range of online courses for healthcare professionals.


The CPD Zone is brought to you by the GP schools of Health Education England working across Thames Valley and Wessex, in association with Oxford Health FT Library.​

Page last reviewed: 27 November, 2020