Tag: Press Release

The press release issued by the Department of Health and Social Care on 8 March 2023.

Women across the country to benefit from better access to care for essential services for menstrual problems, contraception, pelvic pain and menopause care.

• £25 million new funding allocated to create new women’s health hubs, as part of the Women’s Health Strategy for England
• New hubs to reduce pressure on secondary care, waiting lists and tackle health inequalities

Women across England will benefit from tailored healthcare and support by new women’s health hubs – improving access and quality of care for services for menstrual problems, contraception, pelvic pain, menopause care and more.

A £25 million investment over the next two years will accelerate the development of new women’s health hubs to benefit women across England and helping to ease pressures facing the NHS.

The hub models will be tailored to meet local women’s needs. They will focus on delivering services in the community that better fit around women’s lives and streamline access to women’s health services. Hubs aim to address fragmentation in provision, for example by providing management of contraception and heavy bleeding in one visit, or integrating cervical screening with other aspects of women’s health care. At the moment, women often need to attend multiple appointments and go to different places to access these essential services.

As well as improving women’s experiences of healthcare, hubs can create longer-term savings for the NHS through improving access to preventative care and reducing pressure on secondary care services.

Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said:

As we celebrate International Women’s Day, it is important we look back on the real progress made on the rollout of our Women’s Health Strategy – including making hormone replacement therapy more accessible and supporting women’s reproductive health in the workplace.

New funding of £25 million for women’s health hubs – which provide tailored services for women including menopause care, menstrual health and contraception – mean more women can get the right support that works around their daily lives.

Minister for Women’s Health, Maria Caulfield said:

Women make up 51% of the population and should not be an afterthought in healthcare.

Better access to specialist services is key to tackling health inequalities – the £25 million funding will create new Women’s Health Hubs providing specialist care and advice to women across the country.

We are making excellent headway to meet our commitments set out in England’s first ever Women’s Health Strategy, aiming to boost the health and wellbeing of women and girls.

Early adopter women’s health hubs already exist in England including in Liverpool and Manchester. These have been well received by women in their area and are offering a significant increase in appointments for long-acting reversible contraception, alongside other services such as menstrual health, menopause, and pelvic floor care.

Other existing hubs make use of digital models to tackle inequalities in access to care and ensure services are delivered efficiently. These include City and Hackney women’s health hub which is leading the way with virtual menopause engagement events and group consultations, with follow up in a physical location hub where needed.

Based on consultation with more than 100,000 people across England, the Women’s Health Strategy sets out an ambitious ten-year plan for improving the health and wellbeing of women and girls and reforming how the health and care system listens to them.

As part of this, Professor Dame Lesley Regan was appointed as the Women’s Health Ambassador. Her role is instrumental in raising the profile of women’s health, increasing awareness of ‘taboo’ topics, and supporting implementation of the strategy’s priorities.

Professor Dame Lesley Regan, Women’s Health Ambassador:

As a practicing gynaecologist, I have first-hand experience of how important it is for women to have easy access to the right care when they need it.

Although a woman’s health needs change during her life course, most of them are predictable. It is crucial that we provide her with the best information and support at each and every stage of her journey.

Women’s health hubs offer us the opportunity to provide holistic care – including contraception, help with period problems, early pregnancy problems, pelvic pain, menopause and cancer screening. Timely access to high quality services will help to build women’s confidence in the healthcare system.

Expanding women’s health hubs across England is a key commitment in the first ever government-led Women’s Health Strategy for England, with an initial aim to see at least one hub in every integrated care system (ICS).

The Department of Health and Social Care is working collaboratively with stakeholders across the health and care system to develop resources to support local creation of women’s health hubs, including a best practice guide, possible care pathways for local adoption, case studies and a cost benefit analysis. This will be published in due course.

Expanding women’s health hubs is one of ministers’ top priorities for the first year of implementing the Women’s Health Strategy. The eight priorities are:

1. Encouraging expansion of women’s health hubs to improve women’s access to services and to create efficiencies for the NHS
2. Improving information provision on women’s health, including improvements to the NHS website and supporting teachers to deliver women’s health elements of the relationships and sex curriculum.
3. Supporting women’s health in the workplace, including through the Health and Wellbeing Fund 2022-25.
4. Pregnancy loss, including through reporting findings of the independent Pregnancy Loss Review and developing the pregnancy loss certificate.
5. Fertility, including improving access to NHS fertility treatment for female same-sex couples and assessing the use of non-clinical access criteria locally.
6. Improving access to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) by introducing the HRT prescription prepayment certificate in April 2023 and boosting HRT supply.
7. Healthy ageing and long-term conditions – with work feeding into the government’s forthcoming Major Conditions Strategy.
8. Boosting research and evidence into women’s health

NHS chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, said:

For too long, too many women have felt that their pain has been ignored, misunderstood or downplayed when they approach health professionals for help.

The NHS is continuing to find ways to ensure women’s health is prioritised, that more focus is placed on their needs, and that access to the care they need is as convenient as possible – whether that’s for menstrual problems, menopause or contraception.

So it is fantastic, particularly on a day where we are recognising women, that this new funding will be made available to support the NHS to expand these one stop shops across the country.

They are already making a huge difference where they are up and running and will hopefully go a long way in improving the health and experiences of women.

This comes following last week’s announcement that the government has appointed a Department of Work and Pensions Menopause Employment Champion. Helen Tomlinson will work with employers to ensure women affected by the menopause are properly supported in the workplace.

The press release issued by the Department of Health and Social Care on 8 March 2023.

Five projects will receive part of £5 million innovation fund to test new ways to reduce use of so-called recreational drugs.

• On-the-ground projects include skills development and education for young people
• Supports strategy to reduce drug use to a 30-year low and build a world-class knowledge base

Five projects aimed at reducing drug use have been awarded £734,000 of the first allocation of a £5 million grant, with the remaining funding available across two further phases.

As part of the government’s Drug Strategy Innovation Fund, Phase 1 will see the successful applicants begin the initial stage of their projects offering a range of education-based programmes, skills development for young people and community outreach.

Each project will receive initial funding to help develop interventions for evaluation. Those that are successful, and new projects, will be able to apply for further funding in Phase 2 which will launch later in the year to evaluate interventions over 12 months.

Projects for phase 1 are based in Huddersfield, Derbyshire, Manchester, Dorset and the South East of England and will include schemes tailored to meet local needs, including pop-up pods at festivals and events to educate people on the harms of using drugs – as well as workforce support to help young people develop personal and social skills to reduce vulnerability to illegal substance use.

Other projects include training programmes for night-time economy staff, such as people working in nightclubs, as well as experts from public health, voluntary services, the NHS and the police.

Health Minister Neil O’Brien said:

Stopping drug use in its tracks is essential to protecting people and the community from the harms caused by addiction, which has devastating impacts and drives half of all crime.

Projects like these will pave the way for new research into preventing drug addiction and enable us to meet our national strategy aim to cut drugs and crime.

This is part of government plans to reduce the demand for drugs and will decrease the number of people requiring treatment as well as drive down the illegal and exploitative supply chain, anti-social behaviour and wider crime.

The Department of Health and Social Care and the Joint Combating Drugs Unit – a cross governmental team based in the Home Office – have selected the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to lead the research bidding process.

The selection process focused on encouraging creativity and innovation from applicants – looking at prevention of experimental drug use or early intervention as a way to prevent people going on to problematic or dependent use in the future.

Projects showing to be successful after evaluation and implementation in specific areas will be considered for national roll out across the country to stop drug taking in its early stages. The results of the studies will also be used to build a world class evidence base on how to tackle drug use.

Professor Lucy Chappell, Scientific Advisor for the Department of Health and Social Care, NIHR Chief Executive Officer, said:

This is a really positive step towards expanding the evidence base on this important issue. I hope that the range of projects in this, and future phases, will identify effective interventions that can have a real impact across the country in the future. I look forward to seeing the outcomes of these projects.

Projects were chosen following a competitive bidding process and passing an independent assessment committee made up of experts.

Successful projects

Zoë Welch, Head of Research, Change Grow Live said:

Change Grow Live, in partnership with Middlesex University, are delighted to have the support of the NIHR Innovation Fund to Reduce Demand for Illicit Substances to prepare our Derbyshire 1625 Outreach Service for evaluation.

1625 Outreach supports young people and young adults (aged 16-25) through place-based early interventions that improve knowledge and reduce demand and harm around substance use and associated risky behaviours.

The innovative multi-strand approach works across rural and urban settings in Derbyshire and Derby city offering education programmes, responsive outreach, a branded van and pop-up pod at festivals/events, digital interventions, and night-time economy staff training.

Our aim is to prepare 1625 Outreach for robust evaluation through literature review, stakeholder feedback, data linkage and creative methods to capture process and outcomes. We will use desk research, PPI, stakeholder consultation, and county-wide collaboration to refine the model and develop a framework to evaluate the different strands of outreach activity.

Professor Michael Doyle, Professor in Mental Health Research, University of Huddersfield said:

We are excited to start work on our project to reduce demand for illicit substances in young people through co-production, skills training and early intervention. As researchers at the University of Huddersfield, we are looking forward to working in partnership with young people and a multi-agency team of practitioners and experts from public health, voluntary services, the NHS, the police and education.

We hope that getting input from all these stakeholders will help us develop learning resources that help young people build the skills they need, raise awareness and improve understanding to support positive lifestyle choices and reduce risky behaviours, including the use of illicit substances.

Fiona Spargo-Mabbs, CEO, Daniel Spargo-Mabbs Foundation said:

We’re very excited to have secured Phase 1 of this funding, to work with Middlesex University Drug and Alcohol Research Centre team led by Prof Betsy Thom, to develop and refine the DSM Foundation’s existing universal, multi-component drug education programme. Drug use often begins during adolescence, a period of life when attitudes and behaviours are emerging, and therefore have potential to be influenced before becoming established.

There is evidence to show a multi-component approach to drug education can increase its effectiveness in preventing or delaying the onset of drug use in adolescence, but recent research is lacking, so we’re keen to establish what works, how and why.

We’ll be engaging key stakeholders’ insights through surveys and focus groups, including young people and parents, as well as revisiting our current programme theory. By the end of this project we will have developed and refined our existing programme, and produced an evaluation strategy and methodology, ready for delivery and evaluation with young people aged 13–15 in a range of schools in Phase 2.

Dr William Floodgate, Lecturer in Criminology, University of Manchester

Our project will refine a new evidence-based, harm reduction-focused drugs education programme called The Staying Safe Programme (TSSP) so that it can be rolled out to universities across the UK. TSSP has been designed to reduce the demand for drugs among university students by equipping young adults with the knowledge required to reduce harms associated with recreational drug use, by deterring or delaying the onset of drug use, or by preventing the transition to heavy, or problematic use.

We will use a range of methods to establish the appropriateness of TSSP, its in-built assessment of learning, and the effects of TSSP on the students who complete it.

The core research team consists of Dr William Floodgate, Professor Judith Aldridge, & Lydia Swan (University of Manchester), and at the University of South Wales, Professor Katy Holloway and Shannon Murray. Collaborators include: Professor Adam Winstock, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and Universities UK.”

Claire Shiels, Corporate Director of Commissioning & Partnerships, Dorset Council

The partnership in Dorset is absolutely delighted to be successful in this Phase 1 bid to test interventions that will help our workforce support young people to develop personal and social skills interventions that seek to reduce their vulnerability to illegal substance use and to develop effective communications with communities about the social impact of illegal substance use.

Active collaboration between researchers, skilled practitioners, children, young people and parents and parents and carers are central to our programme and we believe this is an excellent opportunity to make a real difference.  This work will be part of our local Combatting Drugs strategy and is an active collaboration between two local councils – Dorset and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP), the local health system and the police.