NHS Prevention Pledge Summit: Cheshire and Merseyside provider trusts unite to strengthen preventative healthcare
Wednesday, 5 November 2025
The 2025 NHS Prevention Pledge Summit took place in Liverpool on Thursday 16 October 2025, bringing together all 16 NHS provider trusts from across Cheshire and Merseyside.
Now in its third year, the summit featured three interactive workshops showcasing current practice from trusts, guest speakers and group exercises focused on key prevention themes.
Additional delegates attended from NHS Cheshire and Merseyside, NHS England, active partnerships and the Champs Public Health Collaborative.
The NHS Prevention Pledge is a core workstream within NHS Cheshire and Merseyside’s Population Health Programme. Originally developed for provider trusts by public health charity Health Equalities Group (HEG) in 2020, the pledge has now been adopted by all 16 provider trusts in the sub-region.
It offers trusts a framework of 14 core commitments to address and measure impact on prevention of physical and mental ill health, health inequalities, social value and anchor institution practices, and staff wellbeing
HEG has also developed a newer version of the pledge for primary care settings and is currently working with 13 primary care organisations across the region.
The summit opened with reflections from Dr Matthew Philpott, Executive Director of HEG, on the recently published 10 Year Health Plan for England. He highlighted how many of the NHS Prevention Pledge’s core commitments align with the Plan’s ambitions to prevent illness and ensure everyone has the same chance to live a healthy life through delivery of more equitable, sustainable and person-centred care.
Workshop 1: Making Every Contact Count
The first workshop focused on Making Every Contact Count (MECC) and began with a presentation from The Walton Centre, which relaunched its MECC training offer in February 2025. This includes an e-learning programme and two MECC ‘themed’ events each year.
Guest speakers Ben Anderson, Consultant in Public Health at NHS England, and Roberta Pomponio from Active Cheshire shared opportunities to enhance MECC at national and regional levels, and conducted group exercises amongst participants from the trusts.
Workshop 2: Smokefree NHS estates
Led by Andrea Crossfield, Strategic Lead for the Cheshire and Merseyside All Together Smokefree programme, this session featured a case study from Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. The trust shared barriers and enablers to implementing smokefree NHS estates, followed by an overview of a new NHS Smokefree Spaces Toolkit designed to support Trusts in embedding smokefree culture and leadership.
Delegates then explored how trusts currently implement smokefree policies, and practical actions to prepare for the anticipated Tobacco and Vapes Bill.
Workshop 3: Creating an active workforce
The final workshop explored how trusts can create a more active workforce, in line with the sub-region’s All Together Active strategy, which will be refreshed in 2026.
Astrid Greenberry from East Cheshire NHS Trust presented a case study on their wide range of physical activity opportunities and partnerships. Danny Woodworth from Merseyside Sport and Mike Jones from Active Cheshire then provided an overview of the All Together Active strategy and its “system belief” in an active workforce.
Participants engaged in group exercises to identify current practices, imagine an ideal active workplace, and consider pragmatic actions to embed physical activity across the workforce.
Ceriann Tunnah, Associate Director of Population Health at NHS Cheshire and Merseyside, attended the summit, and said:
“The Prevention Pledge Summit continues to be a powerful platform for sharing ideas, strengthening partnerships, and driving forward meaningful change.
“It’s inspiring to see trusts across Cheshire and Merseyside working together to embed prevention into everyday practice - creating healthier environments for staff, patients and communities alike.
“As echoed in the NHS 10-year plan, these actions align with our longer-term vision for sustainable, equitable health improvements across the system.”
Matthew Philpott, Executive Director at HEG, reflected:
“The NHS Prevention Pledge provides our 16 provider trusts with a framework to plan, deliver and measure their work on prevention, health inequalities and anchor institution practices, and is helping to deliver on many of the ambitions regarding prevention set out in the new 10 Year Health Plan.
“This year’s summit has taken a deep dive into three of the framework’s core commitments, looking at MECC, smokefree NHS estates, and active workforces, using a workshop approach to better understand the current picture within trusts.
“The group-based exercises we ran over the course of the morning generated some brilliant new ideas for short and medium-term actions, and revealed how trusts can take more of a collaborative approach with providers across the system to embed prevention within governance, operations and clinical environments.
“We will be writing up findings from workshops and presenting this back to trusts and NHS Cheshire and Merseyside through a report in the weeks ahead.”