This a #WeMDT chat where all roles are welcome and encouraged to join in; learn more about #WeMDT chats here.

On Thursday 3rd March we are delighted to be joined for a #WeMDT tweetchat by:

• Linda Hindle, Lead Allied Health Professional and National Engagement Lead for Police and Fire Services,Public Health England, @HindleLinda
• Duncan Stephens, Director of External Affairs at the Royal Society for Public Health, @DuncanStephens9
• Joanne Bosanquet, Deputy Chief Nurse, PHE @MrsBosanquet 
• Gul Root, Lead Pharmacist, PHE @gulroot11.
  

This tweetchat is an opportunity to influence the development of a toolkit being developed by the Royal Society for Public Health. We'll be discussing how we can measure the public health impact of our work - as healthcare professionals, managers and commissioners, and what would help us to do this.

Our wider public health impact

Healthcare professionals and their teams have an impact on the public’s health through their day to day work - whether they work with individuals, communities or populations; in acute, community or primary care.  This can include brief interventions on smoking, diet and alcohol through to the long term impact of rehabilitation on mental wellbeing and physical activity, domestic abuse campaigns, suicide prevention strategies or staff well-being schemes.

The impact of these approaches, however, is often a secondary outcome and may not be measured by services. The current emphasis on prevention by policy makers and commissioners means there we need to make the vital contribution of healthcare professionals more visible.  As part of this we need to measure what we do. 

What should we measure? Developing a toolkit to help

Measuring impact can be challenging, and we also to balance the need to measure with the need to avoid over measurement that can stifle our commitment to healthy conversations, preventative healthcare and innovation.

In response to requests for guidance on how to measure the public health impact of interventions, the Royal Society for Public Health is working with Public Health England to pull together a pragmatic toolkit that will help healthcare professionals and services to do this.  This toolkit will become part of All OUR Health a digital resource for health care professionals due to be launched in April.  All OUR Health will replace the Framework for Personalised Care and Population Health to provide an easy access, one-stop shop for healthcare professionals to understand the current public health priorities, how they can contribute, the supporting evidence, key messages and relevant outcome frameworks.. 

As part of the process of doing this we are keen to collect views from healthcare professionals and commissioners about the public health priorities we need measurement tools for, what will work in practice and what is being used already. This tweet chat will initiate a multi-professional conversation to steer the creation of tools which will be relevant and useful in practice to health care professionals and commissioners.

Useful resources

• AHP public health strategy (AHPF and PHE) 
  
• Nurses 4 public health report (RCN)   
• Health on the High Street: Rethinking the Role of Community Pharmacy (NHS Confederation) 
• Delivering Better Oral Health: an evidence based toolkit for prevention (PHE) 
• Royal Society for Public Health
• PublicHealth England