People Powered Health: How roles are transformed

Recognising patients as assets, with insights and skills to contribute, is a core principle of People Powered Health. Patients take more control of the care they receive and are supported to manage their own health, while professionals become facilitators rather than deliverers of services.

Empowering patients with long term conditions (LTCs) to reduce their reliance on professional intervention (and manage their own conditions through self care) means they're much less likely to need to access primary and secondary care services, they feel empowered and in control, and this in turn improves their general well-being.

In action:

Facilitating rather than delivering is a core aspect of the People Powered Health Leeds project. Rather than being told to lose weight, for example, a person with diabetes might be supported to identify weight loss as a personal goal. Professionals will assist the patient to achieve that goal through an evidence-based appraisal of the available options.

Education and training is critical to enabling a facilitative approach, based on mutual respect between staff and patients. It serves not only to help patients to better understand their condition, how to manage it and the way it interacts with their lifestyle, but also to equip health and social care staff with new insights about the realities of living with illness, and the confidence and skills to interact with their patients in more equal and reciprocal ways.

Find out more about the other three elements of People Powered Health

• Relationships
• Services
• Systems

Find out how Nesta and Innovation Unit are delivering People Powered Health