The Cambridgeshire Integrated Behaviour Change Service (CIBCS), or Healthy You has been delivered across Cambridgeshire for the past five years. Healthy You is commissioned by the county council and provides a wide range of healthy lifestyle interventions for the public including, but are not limited to, smoking cessation, NHS Health Checks and adult weight management. The service is due for recommissioning in 2025.
Cambridgeshire County Council asked Health Innovation East to conduct a rapid evaluation of Healthy You’s overall delivery model, placing a focus on a) assessing the demand for and capacity of adult weight management services and b) considering the role of a place-based approach to delivery.
Place-based approaches involve local collaborations, often including health and care organisations, which co-ordinate services to improve population health and wellbeing.
Healthy You’s multifaceted service model is delivered by six different district councils – each engaging a range of further partnerships, including organisations such as Everyone Health and Living Sport.
Representatives from such partners, district councils, adult weight management services, smoking cessation services, falls prevention services, specialist health trainer services and the Healthy You’s public contact centre all shared their views as part of the evaluation.
The insights and recommendations from Health Innovation East’s work contributed to and were incorporated into the processes and decisions around the service’s re-procurement.
Evidence shows that community weight management services, such as Healthy You, are effective at producing clinically significant weight loss that is sustained up to 12 months (1). While smoking cessation services have been shown to be three times as effective as making an unassisted quit attempt and falls prevention services were shown to lead to a statistically significantly reduction in falls risk (2)(3).This body of research suggests earlier community intervention can reduce pressure on the NHS and help people live longer, healthier lives.
Health Innovation East’s real world evaluation team conducted a rapid evaluation of the Healthy You service between October and December 2024 to consider the following
22 staff involved in delivering and referring into a broad range of Healthy You interventions were invited to share their experiences via a focus group or interviews. Existing service data, including key performance indicators, and qualitative data routinely collected for quarterly reporting was reviewed and analysed.
In addition, the real-world evaluation team conducted a rapid desktop review of other healthy lifestyle services – delivered within similar settings across similar region sizes – as a point of comparison to the Healthy You service.
Hospital to community:
The Healthy You service model is a place-based approach to promote healthy lifestyles, providing accessible services in community settings. It is an effective and feasible model to focus on prevention.
Treatment to prevention:
Healthy You aims to improve healthy life expectancy through addressing the main risk factors for chronic disease and early death; smoking, alcohol use, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure/cholesterol, physical inactivity, excess weight and a poor diet.
The real-world evaluation team’s synthesis of the data they captured shaped recommendations for improving the delivery of Healthy You and the coordination of its constituent services.
Findings: The team’s findings highlighted the importance of using data-driven insights to identify areas of highest priority for action. The findings also noted the contribution made by services targeted to specific groups in helping tackle health inequalities.
Recommendations: Health Innovation East’s recommendations were presented to Cambridgeshire County Council’s deputy director of public health, with the intention of informing a refreshing and re-tendering of Healthy You. They were very well received by the commissioning team.
Working with Health Innovation East on the Healthy You service evaluation has been an enriching experience. Their flexibility in adapting to our evolving needs, patience in understanding our specific requirements, and an unwavering positivity and professionalism made the process seamless.
The real world evaluation team’s expertise and collaborative approach ensured that they were able to gather the information and data needed in a timely and accurate fashion Thus we received meaningful insights and recommendations to support decisions around the re-tendering of the service.
I truly appreciate their dedication and would highly recommend them for any future projects.
The evaluation’s recommendations highlighted actions for Healthy You to implement as part of its commitment to continued improvement. They included, but we not limited to;
Health Innovation East’s report and recommendations are being carefully considered by the Council’s commissioning team as they work to through the processes and decisions required to inform Healthy You’s re-procurement.
Find out more about Healthy You over on their website, or if you would like to know more about how our evaluation service can help you, visit here.