Case Studies
Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity:
Developing a learning paper to support others to realise the potential of communications to help drive change in healthcare
Offer: Evaluation & Learning
Topics: maximising success, effective practice, innovation
The challenge
Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity is in an independent urban health foundation. It works with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and others to improve health in the London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark and beyond.
The charity had begun to explore the value of communications as a tool to help new ideas for tackling health and care issues to succeed. It wanted to host a learning seminar and to develop a learning paper to highlight the lessons being learned through its funded projects across South London. The aim was to support others to realise the potential of communications to help drive change in health.
What did my support involve?
- Carrying out semi-structured in-depth interviews with a sample of stakeholders leading charity-funded projects. The projects were diverse, ranging from dance-based approaches to helping young people with psychosis, to tackling malnutrition in older people, to implementing outcome-based measures for end-of-life care, to improving capacity in improvement science, to using 3D printing to help plan complex surgery, to developing a digital sexual health service.
- Undertaking desk research to review and critically appraise existing evidence relating to the projects led by the stakeholders who were involved in the qualitative research.
- Analysing the evidence from the interviews and desk research and translating the findings into draft principles for good practice in communicating health innovations to support success.
- Supporting two project leads to hone their story on effective communication to help them to deliver a highly impactful presentation during the breakfast learning seminar for local and national stakeholders.
- Facilitating a table discussion at the breakfast learning seminar.
Key outputs
- Blogs (co-produced with the two project leads and the charity)
- A learning paper (co-produced with the charity): Spreading the word – communicating health innovation.
Results and value
The learning paper provided evidence-informed working principles for and practical transferable tips on how to use communication as a tool to help new ideas for tackling health and care issues succeed – which others could learn from, replicate and adapt.
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