Working with People and Communities to Improve Health Outcomes (FutureLearn)

You’ll take a strengths-based approach to understand how you can work with people and not systems. With this knowledge, you’ll learn how your work can have a bigger impact.

Understand how people have different experiences in their access to healthcare

You’ll unpack how different communities can have very different experiences of healthcare as you identify who faces bigger barriers.

With this knowledge, you’ll learn how to consider different perspectives in the design and delivery of healthcare services.

Explore inclusive engagement activities

To help ensure better care and efficient use of resources, you’ll delve into the inclusive engagement practices you can use in your context. With this understanding, you’ll learn the importance of making people feel heard when you engage with them.

You’ll also learn how to look at a diverse population and ensure equitable representation rather than equal representation.

Develop an awareness of implicit bias and underrepresentation

To further ensure the inclusivity of your engagement practices, you’ll explore implicit bias and how you can navigate this to break down barriers to healthcare access.

You’ll also discover the underrepresented groups in England and the strategies you can implement to ensure wider groups of the public are represented in healthcare.

By the end of this course, you’ll have the practical tools and knowledge to understand how to successfully involve people and communities in your work.

Syllabus

Week 1: What and why

Week 2: Who and when

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

- Describe what we mean by working with people and communities

- Investigate the different experiences of people in accessing healthcare

- Improve how you involve people and communities in your own work

- Identify who is included and who is absent when we’re working with people and communities, and who faces bigger barriers

- Assess how best to recognise and measure success

Who is the course for?

This course is primarily designed for those working in the NHS and wider health and care systems in the UK. This includes clinical and non-clinical roles.

You’ll gain the confidence and knowledge to create a more compassionate service to match with your own values of patient-centred care. You don’t need to have any background knowledge or experience to take part.