South east London faces significant population health challenges, some of which are common to urban locations and some of which are unique to our area.

Together with the South East London Integrated Care System (ICS) - we work across organisations and communities to improve physical and mental health outcomes and wellbeing of the population while reducing health inequalities.

South east London has also been particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with evidence that the impact has fallen disproportionately on people from ethnic minority backgrounds. 

On top of this, the current and future economic climate means that finances are likely to be constrained at the same time as healthcare costs are rising, making value based healthcare a key goal for our system.

The South East London Integrated Care System and King’s Health Partners Prevention, Wellbeing and Equity partnership is committed to tackling these challenges.

We want south east London to be a place where your postcode, background, income or ethnicity will not be a predictor of your future and your health. 

Our mission is to bring together a wide range of partners, listen to our communities, act on data and insights, and shift resources to prevention and early intervention, to improve the health and wellbeing of residents across south east London. 

Here you can learn more about the issues we are seeking to address, our plans to tackle them, and opportunities to get involved.

Prevention, Wellbeing and Equity projects

The Prevention, Wellbeing, and Equity partnership brings together South East London Integrated Care System (SEL ICS) and King's Health Partners (KHP) to improve health outcomes.

Our ambitions are rooted in the SEL ICS Prevention Framework, which aims to embed preventative care in everything we do across the system, and develop targeted approaches to tackle health inequalities.

We are:

  • Focusing on the ‘Vital 5’ (healthy blood pressure, healthy mind, healthy eating, safe drinking and quitting smoking), which are important for long-term good health and wellbeing.
  • Establishing Women’s and Girls’ Health Hubs to improve health outcomes and ensure all women and girls have the same access to high quality care.
  • Collaborating with community groups and residents to build trust and reduce health inequalities so that everyone has the same opportunity to lead a healthy life, no matter where they live or who they are.
  • Working with our partners to drive improvements in the uptake of vaccinations and immunisations to ensure all our residents are protected from illness.

These areas are closely connected to two other SEL ICS programmes:

  • Social and economic development, which aims to bring together local people and communities with the health and care system to understand and address the wider determinants of health.
  • Population health management, which focuses on using data and insights about our patients, communities and their health requirements to plan how we deliver the best care for our local population.

Live projects

King’s Health Partners clinical academics, including Prof John Moxham, developed a system-wide approach to ‘The Vital 5’. This focuses on five risk factors - blood pressure, mental health, obesity, smoking and alcohol intake - which if identified and managed early, will make a big difference to our population’s health and help to reduce inequalities by preventing the onset of ill-health.

A range of projects are underway to support this:

Healthy blood pressure

Stop smoking

Safe drinking

Healthy mind

Healthy weight

The Vital 5 Check is a health and wellbeing intervention that seeks to better detect Vital 5 risk factors and provide support in a way that meets the needs of communities who are more likely to experience health inequalities.

The Vital 5 Check has been designed with healthcare staff and local communities and is focused on the things that residents have said are important to them. It is currently being piloted in community pharmacies across south east London, digital kiosks, community health hubs (Bromley), outreach in Southwark and Lambeth, and some outpatient services at Guys’ and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. 

You can learn more on NHS South East London’s website.

For many women and girls across south east London, getting access to timely care can be difficult.

We’re committed to making it easier for them to get the care and support they need in the right place, at the right time.

Following extensive engagement with local communities, we’ve established two pilot health hubs serving residents in Bexley, Greenwich and Lambeth. These hubs bring together doctors, nurses and other specialists to provide a one stop shop for a range of conditions, reducing waiting times for appointments and easing pressure on busy hospital services.

We’re also launched new webpages to help residents access local services and advice on a range of common conditions.

Five community organisations in south east London have been selected for a ground-breaking new partnership to rebuild trust in local health services and support residents to live well for longer.

Each organisation will receive a total of £150,000 over three years to be part of the Trust and Health Creation Partnership – a collaboration between King’s Health Partners, SEL ICS and the South East London Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Strategic Alliance. 

The partnership is rethinking how we prevent illness and create the right conditions for residents to live healthier lives. Each partner will design and test new ways of supporting people’s health, helping to rebuild trust and transform services to better meet the needs of our residents. 

Visit the South East London VCSE Strategic Alliance’s website to learn more about the Trust and Health Creation Partnership and follow the project as it develops.

We’re delivering targeted campaigns to improve vaccination access and trust – especially in communities with lower uptake:

The 'Why we get vaccinated' campaign across south east London is encouraging people to have conversations around vaccinations.

This multi-partner campaign seeks to build trust and land messages that resonate with London communities by being informative rather than instructive.

Healthcare professionals can access communications resources, such as posters, videos and social media assets, by visiting NHS South East London’s campaigns page. This also includes supporting materials for our autumn/winter and childhood vaccinations campaigns.

If your organisation would like to get involved with the Prevention, Wellbeing and Equity Partnership or join our newsletter mailing list, please contact us for more details.

Events, training, and resources

Sign up to our Future NHS workspaces for the latest training and resources covering Vital 5, prevention and women’s and girls’ health:

•    Prevention, Wellbeing and Equity;
•    South East London Women’s and Girls’ Health Network.

We’ve established a Prevention, Wellbeing and Equity Community of Practice to bring together colleagues working across population health and preventative care in south east London.

Each session covers a range of prevention and health inequalities topics, and shines a light on innovative projects across our system. If you'd like to join our webinars or suggest a topic to cover, please email preventionandequity@kcl.ac.uk. Watch previous recordings here.

Details of upcoming population health and prevention events will be posted on our events listings.

We continue to add new population health and prevention resources to our Learning Hub – just click on the ‘Population Health’ category.

Review resources and case studies from teams across our partnership who are using Value Based Healthcare methodology to improve the care they provide to our patients and service users.