Month: May 2015

Categories
Alcohol Care of the Elderly Good Practice Long-Term Conditions Patient Satisfaction Public Mental Health Substance Misuse Tobacco & Drugs

Peer support: what is it and does it work?

By National Voices (2015)

This review found evidence that peer support can help people feel more knowledgeable, confident and happy, and less isolated and alone. It also showed that there is a limited understanding of the different forms of peer support, how best to deliver support and the forms of training and infrastructure to get the most impact from it. It concludes that further evidence is needed to fully understand the impact that peer support has on the health service and individuals with long-term health conditions.

Click here to view this review

Categories
Cancer Commissioning Public Health Advice to NHS Commissioners Statistics

Cancer waiting times: annual report, 2014-2015

By NHS England (2015)

The latest annual statistics on waiting times for suspected and diagnosed cancer patients accessing NHS services were released on 20th May 2015 by NHS England according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority.

Click here to view the statistics

Categories
Alcohol Finance Health Promotion Primary Care Commissioning Tobacco & Drugs

Assessing the impacts of alcohol policies

By OECD Health Working Papers (2015)

This working paper assesses alcohol policies in three countries: Canada, the Czech Republic and Germany. The results show that brief interventions in primary care, typically targeting high-risk drinkers, and tax increases, which affect all drinkers, have the potential to generate large health gains. The impacts of regulation and enforcement policies as well as other health care interventions are more dependent on the setting and mode of implementation, while school-based programmes show less promise. Alcohol policies have the potential to prevent alcohol-related disabilities and injuries in hundreds of thousands of working-age people in the countries examined, with major potential gains in their productivity. Most alcohol policies are estimated to cut health care expenditures to the extent that their implementation costs would be more than offset. Health care interventions and enforcement of drinking-and-driving restrictions are more expensive policies, but they still have very favourable cost-effectiveness profiles.

Click here to view this working paper

Categories
Public Mental Health

A new priority for mental health

By London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance (2015)

The final report in the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) series of background briefings on key policy issues in the May 2015 UK general election calls on the three main political parties to commit themselves to raising dramatically the coverage of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT), the service that provides psychological therapies for depression and anxiety disorders.

Click here to view this report

 

Categories
Children CYP Healthcare Guidance Healthy Child including NCMP & CDO Infant Mortality Young People

Facing the future: together for child health 2015

By Royal College of General Practitioners (2015)

Children make up more than a quarter of emergency department attendances in the UK and in England alone there has been a 28 per cent increase in admissions for children to hospital over the last ten years. Healthcare professionals are warning that unless there is an overhaul of unscheduled care services, there is a risk that growing demand will result in poorer outcomes for children. This set of standards says that in order to deal with these pressures, and to improve child health outcomes, not only do unscheduled care services need more investment but there also needs to be a shake-up of how services are designed, with more children being cared for outside the hospital, in the community and closer to their home.

Click here to view these standards

Categories
Health Outcomes Health Promotion Library Patient Experience

Heads, hands and heart: asset-based approaches in health care: a review of the conceptual evidence and case studies of asset-based approaches in health, care and well-being

By The Health Foundation (2015)

This report summarises the theory and evidence behind asset-based approaches in health care and wellbeing and gives details of six case studies, describing these approaches in action. It sets out some of the opportunities and challenges in adopting asset-based approaches for improving health and wellbeing and explores some of the key principles for developing health assets and the evidence and mechanisms of impact on health outcomes of asset-based projects in the UK.

Click here to view this report

Categories
Care of the Elderly Good Practice Patient Experience Patient Satisfaction

Hidden citizens: how can we identify the most lonely older adults?

By Campaign to End Loneliness (2015)

In 2013, the Campaign to End Loneliness consulted over 100 frontline service providers about what they needed to improve their support. Nearly half said they wanted a tool or information that could help them to identify people experiencing – or at risk of – loneliness. This report explores what was already known in both research and practice about identifying people experiencing loneliness. It looked at current approaches to identifying loneliness and searched for insights into how services can improve their outreach and support.

Click here to view this report