Adam Conroy, Health Development Coordinator for Hulme, Moss Side and Rusholme (HMSR), blogs on the impact of inclusive neighbourhood partnership meetings.

In November 2020, we restarted our HMSR Neighbourhood Partnership meetings. Despite being online, they’ve been very successful and keep going from strength-to-strength each month.

Up to 60 people from a diverse range of VCSE organisations, health and other services come together to tackle the priority issues for people who live in Hulme, Moss Side and Rusholme, and to strengthen relationships between these partners.

We’ve particularly looked at the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on some communities and the underlying health inequities, public health messaging and supporting people to keep safe including vaccination, digital inclusion, feeding in to the MLCO Neighbourhood Plan, increasing life expectancy (thinking about the wider determinants of health such as a healthy diet, affordable decent housing, liveable wages, increasing physical activity and reducing smoking and alcohol consumption), greening and health, and keeping people well through winter.

The MLCO Neighbourhood Leadership Team will continue to run participative meetings, with small group discussions and actions feeding into the bigger picture, partnership action informed by reflecting on the evidence and knowledge of the Neighbourhood and the needs of our diverse communities.

We are stronger than the sum of our parts!

Background videos:

• What makes us healthy? (the social determinants of health, from the Health Foundation)
• Power, a health and social justice issue (health inequalities, from the NHS)
• Introducing Manchester Local Care Organisation