NHS Insights Prioritisation Programme (NIPP) project

The NHS Insights Prioritisation Programme (NIPP) was launched by NHS England & Improvement’s Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) to test promising interventions and generate insights that will be of value to local decision makers and which support post-pandemic ways of working, build service resilience and deliver benefits to patients. Healthy Eating and Active Lifestyles for Diabetes (HEAL-D) in African and Caribbean communities was chosen as the NIPP project in south London.

The pandemic emphasised the importance of effective T2D management and the need for accessible, culturally sensitive diabetes education to be a priority. Post-pandemic, the provision of bespoke diabetes education meeting the cultural needs of patients provides a cost-effective approach to improve long-term diabetes outcomes and tackling health inequalities.

This was a collaboration between the Health Innovation Network (the Academic Health Science Network for south London), the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaborative (ARC) south London and Louise Goff (Researcher at King’s College London (KCL) as the developer of HEAL-D. The project was comprised of two workstreams.

To evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of HEAL-D Online across south London and assess scalability requirements beyond south London to provide crucial evidence to support further local commissioning of the service and inform research studies to examine the clinical impact of face-to-face and remote HEAL-D delivery. This included:

• a pragmatic mixed methods prospective service evaluation of HEAL-D online in south London. Including interviews with service users, service delivery staff, observations using fidelity checklists and reviewing service level data
• a prospective, qualitative study on scaling up the HEAL-D online model involving interviews with commissioners and service delivery staff from elsewhere in the country, as well as focus groups with individuals to explore digital accessibility and exclusion

To explore the potential scale of HEAL-D Online by preparing key resources and engaging with areas outside south London to raise awareness, learn about potential commissioning and operating models and examine how HEAL-D Online may be an effective solution in areas with differing populations and geographies.

Rigorous co-design methods were used to develop HEAL-D in partnership with adults of African and Caribbean heritage living with type 2 diabetes and involvement continued through this project.

Involvement was embedded through:

• Including involvement as part of the funding bid (adequate time as well as funding for reimbursement of individuals).
• a reference group of people with lived experience of HEAL-D to support key decision making
• HEAL-D programme service user feedback
• Focus groups and interviews with people from the HEAL-D target population