£5 million award scheme launches to improve management of long-term conditions

Co-creating Health is a £5 million, three-year initiative which aims to transform healthcare by making self-management an integral part of the NHS. The unique initiative will offer an integrated package of self-management support courses for patients, development programmes for clinicians to help their patients better self-manage, and assistance in service redesign. The Health Foundation is looking to make up to eight awards worth in the region of £600,000 each.

Over 17 million people in the UK are currently living with a long-term condition. Furthermore, the incidence of chronic diseases in the over 65s is set to double by 2030. Co-creating Health aims to help healthcare professionals provide a more responsive, effective service for people with long-term conditions, at the same time as empowering patients to take a more active role in managing their own health. ‘Co-creation’ as a term applies to an approach where patients work with clinicians to take shared decisions and responsibility for improving their own health and healthcare.

The initiative will take a different format from other successful schemes designed to encourage self-management such as the Department of Health’s Expert Patient Programme. For the first time, The Health Foundation will test an integrated approach which focuses on three elements:

1. Self-management courses for patients
2. Advanced development programmes for clinicians
3. Organisational development programmes that facilitate service redesign to make self-management easier for both patients and clinicians.

The Health Foundation is looking for applications from interested and committed teams working across primary and secondary care and with a proven track record in improving services for people with long-term conditions. Each team is asked to focus its work on one long-term condition that has a national prevalence of at least 150 in 100,000 and that requires continuing self-management, clinical support and primary care such as asthma, diabetes or coronary heart disease.

Natalie Grazin, Assistant Director at The Health Foundation, said, “We have seen promising results from self-management courses but we know that in isolation they are of limited effectiveness. Co-creating Health is a unique, whole-systems improvement initiative that has the potential to improve the health outcomes of thousands of people living with long-term conditions. We encourage teams to apply so that together we can help clinicians, patients and organisations to embed self-management into the very heart of the health service.”

Harry Cayton, National Director for Patients and the Public at the Department of Health and an advisor to The Health Foundation, added, “Co-creating Health is a unique approach. By combining three interventions to create partnership between health professionals and people with long-term conditions it will provide a real impetus to professional development, service re-design and well-being for people.”

The Co-creating Health award scheme is open for applications until 14 February 2007. Further information including eligibility criteria can be found on the Co-creating Health webpage. Successful teams will be selected in June 2007 and will begin work shortly thereafter