HIT Conference goes virtual to address the impact of COVID-19 and wider health inequalities

Bristol Health Partners held its annual Health Integration
Team (HIT) Conference as an entirely virtual event this year because of the
pandemic. The event, “COVID-19 Call to Action: What else can we achieve in
health and social care?”, took place between 28 September and 1 October and was
attended by more than 250 academics, clinicians, commissioners and others from
organisations across Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset.

Over the four days, there was a packed programme, including
case study presentations from our HITs and health network partners, a panel
discussion on the impact of COVID, personal reflections from our patient and
public contributors and break out conversations for our HITs to discuss and share
best practice.

The first day of the event saw approximately 140 delegates
attend the official launch of our Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC) with presentations
from our Chair, Andrea Young and our AHSC Director, Professor David Wynick. The
keynote speaker this year was Professor Sir Robert Lechler, former Executive
Director of King’s Health Partners AHSC, who shared his experience of running
an AHSC over the last ten years.

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.

The final day of the Conference featured interviews with
three inspirational leaders: Bristol Health Partners Chair Andrea Young,
award-winning journalist and health campaigner Primrose Granville and sustainability
and community engagement expert Zoe Banks Gross. The interviews were conducted
by Dr Julian Walker, Director of Research & Development at Avon and
Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust and member of the Bristol Health
Partners Executive Team.

Feedback has been positive from those who attended the
conference – and thank you to those who completed an evaluation form.

“I really enjoyed the HIT conversation session. It was very
smoothly organised, and the breakout sessions worked really well,” said Julie
Clayton, Coordinator of the Dementia HIT.

Dr Alison Llewellyn is the Project Manager of the Chronic
Pain HIT and presented a case study in one of the HIT Conversation sessions and
she said: “It was a pleasure to have contributed to the HIT Conversation
session. The breakout discussions that followed were excellent. There is a
clear impetus and desire for the HITs to work together on common themes and
share learning and best practice, which was lovely to hear.”

Oliver Watson, Joint Chief Operating Officer of Bristol
Health Partners said: “Even though it has been a challenging time across health
and care systems, we are pleased to see that the level of engagement and
enthusiasm from our Health Integration Teams and the Partnership has not
wavered. This event gave us the opportunity to come together and focus on what
we have learnt so far from our collective COVID response and how we can apply this
to tackling other critical areas such as health inequalities and climate
change. We’re motivated now more than ever to translate this enthusiasm into
practical work with our HITs and partners.

“We’d like to thank all of our speakers, panellists, patient
and public contributors, interviewees, session chairs and delegates for making
our first virtual HIT Conference such a success. Also a special thank you to
the Autumn Live team and George Chan at Blue Fire Films for all their support.”

Presentations and recordings of all the Conference sessions
are available here.