Five resources from our communications toolkit to help you spread improvement

We have just launched a comprehensive online communications toolkit for health care improvement. It’s packed full of guidance and resources to help you tell people about your work, engage with stakeholders and spread your success.

The toolkit is written for health care professionals working in improvement who want to understand and use communications to better plan, implement and spread their work.

No previous experience of communications is required. The toolkit takes you step by step through the stages of an improvement project, helping you think about communications at every stage and providing guidance on best practice. It also gives you access to a range of individual tools, templates and support materials to help create communications plans, craft messages or map your audiences.

The toolkit includes sections on: planning for success, getting started, sustaining interest and spreading your work. You can work through the four sections or dip into particular parts of the toolkit that you are most interested in. 

We signpost the resources most relevant to spreading quality improvement below, but do explore the whole toolkit and let us know what you think.

Five resources to help spread quality improvement

• Reviewing communications and gathering the evidence for spread – a guide

  This guide asks some key questions to help you review your communications activity to date and gather all the evidence, data and stories about your successful project which will help you communicate effectively during the spread stage.

• How communications can help spread – a guide

  Securing a wider interest in your work may mean reaching and engaging with audiences who are not yet acquainted with your project. This guide explains how good communications can help you amplify your influence, continue to celebrate your success and share and adapt your ideas.

• Communications plan for spread – a template

  Once you’ve read the guide and done your thinking, you’ll need to create a straightforward communications plan to encourage spread of your project. This simple template will make it easy for you to set out your plan in a usable way, focusing on audiences, activity, messages, channels and timings.

• Influencing a policy audience – a guide

  Your project’s outcome and the learning gained through it may have the potential to influence wider organisational and even national policy. This guidance looks at how to engage with those who have the ability, or the influence, to change policy in areas related to your work.

• Communications to secure funding to sustain spread – a guide

  Often spreading an approach on a larger scale requires time and money. This guide looks at how communications can help in bids for further funding and the extension of your original project, maximising the chances of long-term success.

Find out more: Explore the full toolkit