CSP backs resource to help physios measure their impact on public health

^{Adult obesity is one of 10 'impact pathways' included in the toolkit} 

Public Health England and the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) launched the Everyday Interactions resource today.

Kelly Clifford, CSP impact and evaluation manager, and Anna Lowe, a senior lecturer in physiotherapy at Sheffield Hallam University, were members of the steering group that produced the resource. They represented the CSP.

Ms Clifford said: ‘It’s important for all health professionals, including physiotherapists, to measure what impact they are having on public health.

‘This toolkit will help members see what they are achieving through their interventions as well as enabling them to make service improvements, where necessary.’

Ms Lowe said: ‘It takes a handful of public health priorities and breaks down exactly what you could measure, what you could record and what you could collate in order to create evidence of impact.’

Visual impact pathways

The visual pathways in the resource allow healthcare professionals to record their public health impact in a quick and easy way.

The 10 ‘impact pathways’, or public health topics that healthcare professionals can support, are: adult obesity; alcohol; child oral health; dementia; healthy beginnings; falls; mental wellbeing; physical activity; sexual and reproductive health and HIV; and smoking and tobacco.

Each impact pathway has four sections

• ‘do’ focuses on brief interventions a healthcare professional can carry out with a patient, such as guiding them to services
• ‘record’ relates to recordable information taken from referral details or measurements, such as body mass index
• ‘collate’ refers to data taken from many individuals and captured over a long period 
• ‘impact’ identifies the likely effect a service is having locally, and highlights how any interventions may impact on the public health priorities that have been set nationally

The RSPH has developed a free e-learning package to accompany the resource.

Author: Robert Millett