Highlights in 2020-21

Our partnership and our Health Integration Teams can look back on a challenging year with pride at what has been achieved. Here’s a selection of highlights from 2021-21.

Enabling new research funding

Close to £2 million in research funding has been secured by HITs, including two grants each worth £500,000 to support HIV inequalities and green social prescribing. Read about our research funding success

System change and pathway redesign

£650,000 invested in service changes involving our HITs.
Stroke HIT, in particular its Service User Group, has been working closely with the Healthier Together Sustainability and Transformation Partnership to progress the BNSSG Stroke Care Pathway Reconfiguration.
Psychosis HIT’s Service User Reference Group has contributed to developing the BNSSG Community Mental Health Framework.

Embedding patient and public involvement (PPI)

Our number of patient and public contributors has doubled since last year. Our HITs now have more than 70 patient and public contributors as members, seven of whom are embedded across HIT leadership teams.
The pandemic left many patients and service users feeling isolated from their usual support networks. Bristol Bones and Joints HIT innovated by working with patients to launch popular Zoom coffee mornings to help stay connected.
Common Ambition Bristol, supported by our Sexual Health Improvement Programme (SHIP) HIT, recruited public contributors from Bristol’s African and Caribbean heritage communities to co-produce interventions to reduce HIV inequalities and stigma.
Ethnic minority communities do not access Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services as successfully as other population groups. Our Psychological Therapies in Primary Care (InPsyTe) HIT ran patient and service-user outreach events at Junction 3 Library to gain insight into the reasons why.

Communicating and engaging

Our Conference event programme “COVID-19 Call to Action: What else can we achieve in health and social care?”, took place between 28 September and 1 October. Events were attended by more than 250 academics, clinicians, commissioners and others from organisations across Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset.
The first day of the event saw approximately 140 delegates attend the official launch of our Academic Health Science Centre.
In our closed HIT sessions, more than 60 people from 13 of our HITs took part in discussions on addressing health inequalities and service recovery.
Over 700 people attended the ACE HIT (now Adversity and Trauma HIT) webinar series exploring how trauma can impact on health and wellbeing
EDHIT launched a cross-HIT arts-based #CaptureKindness event on social media during Mental Health Awareness Week 2020.

Enabling city-wide work

Our Perinatal Mental Health (IMPROVE) HIT brought together stakeholders across BNSSG to get a picture of how mental health services for families might be impacted by staff deployment. This group worked closely with the CCG to keep the system connected, offer a space for service providers, practitioners and professionals to connect, and bring the sector together at a challenging time for expectant and new parents.
Work supported by APPHLE HIT led to a year-long partnership with Black and Green Ambassadors to encourage older people from Black African and Caribbean heritage communities to access Bristol’s green spaces.

Influencing beyond our city

Bristol Health Partners has been designated as one of only eight Academic Health Science Centres (AHSCs) in England. Read about why this designation is important.
The Improving care in self-harm (STITCH) HIT’s training materials to help GPs manage people who present with mental and emotional health issues, will be hosted on REMEDY, one of the most widely-used online GP resources.
The SHINE HIT contributed to international journal, Cities & Health, on child friendly cities
APPHLE HIT secured a Bristol walks section on national walking app, Go Jauntly.