As part of our Mobilising Communities programme the Bromley-by-Bow Health Partnership is exploring developing community-based resources to complement their move towards a new model of primary care. This broader programme is called the 'Well Programme' and its aim is to move from a transactional to a relational model of health. They aim to engage with existing community programmes and develop others to ensure that support is available at the most appropriate level. 

Ian Jackson, Director of The Bromley by Bow Health Partnership shared their vision with us.​

The Bromley by Bow Health Partnership and Bromley by Bow Centre have between them 30 years’ experience working in the Bow area of Tower Hamlets. We have developed a strongly rooted place-based approach to our collective mission to improve the health, wellbeing, resourcefulness and capacity of our communities. We have been profoundly shaped by the communities we serve. Their energy, imagination and ideas have brought us to where we are.

We provide primary care services out of three practices and a range of health, employment, social enterprise, welfare advice and socially supportive services from a number of sites. We are well known for our innovative work on social prescribing. We seek to mirror in our provision the Marmot principle that 30% of health outcomes are attributable to medical intervention but 70% to socio-economic factors.

We think that we are at the end of a phase of our work which has been characterised by increased resourcing, and improving and refining our service model. Our vision of the future has a number of elements which, together we believe amount to a revolution in the health and wellbeing system based on the adoption of small team, whole community and behavioural health insights, combined with an all pervasive emphasis on transformative relationships.

This involves:

• Moving from a service provision/provider model to a model based on identifying, supporting and growing community assets and capabilities. This means that we as organisations are on a journey from being primarily providers of services to being primarily in the business of supporting community activity, resilience and connectedness.

• Supporting patient/citizen activism to empower people to better manage their own health and wellbeing and that of the community around them.

• Reimagining our clinical offer as one which focuses more fundamentally on health behaviour change

• An active alliance of connected organisations delivering, between them, the range of activity associated with the wider determinants of health

We will be sharing insights and lessons from all three Mobilising Communities site plans in the coming weeks.