Football club community organisations from across London gathered at West Ham’s stadium to celebrate and strengthen their relationship with the NHS and other groups including city councils.
The event was aimed at igniting future partnership opportunities for the organisations (known as CCOs) to collaborate with service providers and help to achieve the best possible population health for London and beyond, with a particular focus on preventing some of society’s most serious health problems.
Guests included Caroline Clarke, Regional Director for the NHS in London, and representatives from city councils, health providers and CCOs from 17 London professional football clubs, who are part of the ‘London United’ programme.
CONNECTIONS
In his opening address, the CEO of West Ham United Foundation, Joseph Lyons, reflected on his club’s partnership with the NHS which began in 2015 with a programme aimed at tackling high rates of Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Other partnership working with health providers has supported schemes across London United such as ‘Advantage Mentoring’ which piloted in north-east London through West Ham, Arsenal and Leyton Orient, and supports the mental health of young people.
Lyons stated: “Our connections with colleagues today within the NHS only continue to strengthen. Coming together as a collaborative network, building greater relationships, and growing a trusted partnership takes time and energy, something we saw in abundance throughout the event.
“The job is to now focus on core programming and impactful preventative provisions that really work, and we will now look forward to develop new, innovative and aspirational prevention solutions to some of society’s most serious health problems - London United and London NHS is a true collaboration.”
EXPERIENCES
During the event, former West Ham players Anton Ferdinand and Matt Jarvis oversaw a match between Health United and London United, which the former won 5-4. Ferdinand said: “Everyone needs the NHS at some point in their lives, and it’s great that today football has been able to unite people from the NHS with CCOs to share experiences.”
Also attending was Vice President of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Pedro Delgado, who commented: “The match between London United and Health United was testament to the potential of football to build bridges across individuals and organisations in service of best possible health for all. Improving population health with and for communities will take an ever-increasing set of active stakeholders collaborating to co-create innovative solutions, and to continuously learn, iterate and improve over time.”
