“Living Well” is a community pharmacy service provided in over 500 community pharmacies across Northern Ireland that aims to increase patient and public knowledge and understanding of key healthy lifestyle and public health messages so patients are empowered to take actions which will improve their health. Through the Living Well service, pharmacies provide consistent public health messages and help patients to address risk factors which contribute to disease in Northern Ireland. Risk factors can include high blood pressure, tobacco use, harmful misuse of alcohol, unhealthy diet, and substance misuse.
Patient engagement and information dissemination is achieved through a number of methods, such as
• raising awareness of various public health messages and campaigns through poster display, social media, running in-store campaign activities, presentations or linking with the community and voluntary sector
• sharing of health and wellbeing information, to include displaying posters , providing advice or written literature as well as take home items (depending on the campaign topic) such as tape measures for waist measurements.
• signposting to a relevant health professional, service or support in the community
• using behavioural interventions, if appropriate
Campaigns run for a minimum of two months, therefore we can provide up to six campaigns in one year. As information is disseminated through a range of methods, it allows a wide demographic to be reached. Community pharmacy can tailor how information is relayed to patients, to meet patient and local needs, such as those with low health literacy or communication needs. As pharmacies are embedded in communities, they are able to reach “hard to reach” sectors and ensure information reaches those in need in a format that is relatable to them. Each campaign allows the public to access behavioural interventions alongside written and verbal information to help with self-care and improving personal health and wellbeing. Through patient engagement, community pharmacies are able to direct patients to the correct service, support patients in preventing and treating ill health and ensure patients access medical care when and if appropriate. In this way, “Living Well” will help relieve pressure on the NHS and other services impacted by the pandemic.
In 2019/2020, over 50,000 patients were directly engaged in health through the Living Well service and in 2020/2021, Living Well continued to provide support, by launching campaigns focused on COVID-19 related topics, such as Looking after your health and wellbeing during COVID-19, vaccinations, mental health and social distancing. It is estimated that the campaigns directly reached a total of over 164,646 patients. In total for 2021/22, it is estimated that during four Living Well campaigns; Know your Units (Alcohol), Be Cancer Aware (cancer prevention), Boost Your Immunity (COVID-19/ Flu) and Making Healthier Choices (portion control) community pharmacy reached over 231,510 patients.
** figures provided are an estimation of patients engaged directly in pharmacy but pharmacy also engage via other mechanisms, such as gyms, schools, sports clubs, scouts, men’s sheds, etc. In light of this, we are unable to fully quantify the exact outreach of each campaign.
