1. Kate Yorke, Project Manager – MECC
Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire

2. Overview What is Making Every Contact Count? Links to cancer strategy
Making Every Contact Count in the South West
Next steps

3. is Making Every Contact Count?
MECC is an approach to behaviour change that uses the everyday interactions that organisations and individuals have with other people to support them in making positive changes to their physical and mental health and wellbeing.
MECC training in the SW is being delivered using the Wessex Approach which takes an organisational development approach to MECC
Training involves staff developing skills so that they can have healthy conversations using Open Discovery Questions. Training will be cascaded through organisations to reach as many staff as possible
Making Every Contact Count (MECC) is about supporting workforces to maximise on the public health opportunity they have with their regular contact with the public. Staff from a variety of organisation can make a difference to the health and wellbeing of the population by encouraging people to change behaviours that may be damaging to their health.
DEFINITION
Making Every Contact Count training allows workforces to:
Deliver a ‘very brief’ or ‘brief’ evidence based advice/intervention for lifestyle behavioural change;
Be competent and confident to do this; and
Be knowledgeable about local services and how to access them.
MECC is about transforming the culture to one that looks to enhance positive outcomes through providing people with information and encouragement.
MECC is not about additional workload but developing skills to enable staff to use a different approach to engage with people to support them to make changes to their lifestyles to improve their health.
MECC is for everyone,

4. The need for MECC
These are the policy drivers for Making Every Contact Count:
The NHS – Five Year Forward View, (NHS 5YFV) talks about a ‘radical upgrading of prevention and public health’ and the role the NHS has in enabling self-care and management of health. “The  NHS has an important public health role in making every contact count. The NHS must focus on preventing illness, with staff using every contact they have with people as an opportunity to help people stay in good health – by not smoking, eating healthily, drinking less alcohol, and exercising more.”
The Health Education England mandate sees the role it has in helping the workforce to make the NHS 5YFV happen. The mandate makes plain the role HEE has in developing people to have the confidence, skills and knowledge to make every contact count.
The Local Government Association (LGA) can see the important role local authorities have in supporting the implementation of MECC. Their services bring opportunities to making every contact count and can impact on the wider determinants of health (i.e. housing, social care, transport). (LGA, 2014)
Public Health England (PHE) PHE in Evidence into Action talks about a ‘fundamentally new approach to creating and sustaining health, mental and physical, at every stage of life and across all our communities is needed’. PHE have an important role in working with others to take Making Every Contact Count forward both locally and nationally. This is to make sure the way MECC is taken forward works well and is consistent and can build the evidence-base.
NHS England – NHS Standard Contract - The NHS Standard Contract is mandated by NHS England for use by commissioners for all contracts for healthcare services other than primary care. Standard Condition 8.6 states:
The Provider must develop and maintain an organisational plan to ensure that Staff use every contact that they have with Service Users and the public as an opportunity to maintain or improve health and wellbeing, in accordance with the principles and using the tools comprised in Making Every Contact Count Guidance.

5. Benefits of MECC
Staff wellbeing – healthy conversations within the workplace
Patient / Service user benefits – longer, healthier lives
Quality Benefits – Improving quality of services and patient outcomes
Efficiency benefits – MECC will build ability in staff to help service users to change their behaviour and this will reduce demands for health and social care over the long-term

6. MECC in the NHS
“The Provider must develop and maintain an organisational plan to ensure that Staff use every contact that they have with Service Users and the public as an opportunity to maintain or improve health and wellbeing, in accordance with the principles and using the tools comprised in Making Every Contact Count Guidance.”
- NHS England 2017/18 NHS Standard Contract Service Conditions

7. MECC Cancer Prevention
“We will do this by engaging clinicians, commissioners and local authority providers in new initiatives to change behaviour, increasing public awareness of risk factors and health promotion, especially with vulnerable groups.”
Cancer strategy Implementation Plan “Achieving World Class Cancer Outcomes – Taking the strategy forward”
Radically upgrading prevention and public health is the first major building block for change in the plan
Aim is to significantly reduce the 40% of cancers caused by behavioural, lifestyle and environmental factors
We will do this by see above - “increasing public awareness of risk factors and health promotion”
Our priorities for 2016/17 are:
The Government will publish the new Tobacco Control Plan by the end of 2016.
Working with Public Health England and other partners, the Department of Health will publish the national childhood obesity strategy in late 2016.
Public Health England will publish their alcohol evidence review in autumn 2016.

8. MECC Cancer Prevention – Messages that can be delivered by MECC
Move more
Stress less
Eat well
Stop smoking
Get checked
Drink less alcohol
Be sun smart
Our priorities for 2016/17 are:
The Government will publish the new Tobacco Control Plan by the end of 2016.
Working with Public Health England and other partners, the Department of Health will publish the national childhood obesity strategy in late 2016.
Public Health England will publish their alcohol evidence review in autumn 2016.

9. Early Diagnosis / Living with and beyond Cancer
MECC can support early diagnosis by:
Promoting screening uptake
Promoting cancer campaigns
Promoting healthy lifestyles – getting more active, quitting smoking, achieving a healthy, drinking less alcohol

10. MECC in the South West MECC SW approach:
Targeted at people aged 40 and over
Coordinated and consistent approach to MECC
Ensuring organisational readiness (STP level buy-in, organisational lead)
Ensuring staff readiness and training (cascade model)
Robust review and evaluation process to develop the future implementation of MECC

11. MECC Next Steps for You Make contact with your local MECC Lead
Find out about local training opportunities
Develop a plan for implementation across your area
Promote the MECC agenda

12. Contact Details – BNSSG / Gloucs / Somerset.
(Louise)

13. EJenkinsPa@swindon.gov.uk (Emily)
Contact Details – BSW
(Emily)