Community groups in Oldham have played a key role in developing resources to inform young people and families of culturally relevant asthma triggers and management techniques.

As part of a pilot introduced in February 2023 and delivered as part of the Innovation for Healthcare Inequalities Programme (InHIP), this work with communities in Oldham was done to address local healthcare inequalities, taking a whole-household approach to asthma intervention.

The engagement with community groups involved extensive co-production groups and sessions, helping the project to gather insights and learnings from real-world experience of families and those suffering from asthma or those from a smoking household. These included:

• focus groups
• feedback sessions
• co-creation workshops
• public member interviews

To begin with, Health Innovation Manchester worked collaboratively with key stakeholders including NHS Greater Manchester (NHS GM), The Royal Oldham Hospital, ABL Health and Your Health Oldham  to identify key focus points within the local health and care system, agreeing that one of the greatest healthcare inequality challenges in Greater Manchester is paediatric asthma and effects of second-hand smoke on asthma.

With the Royal Oldham Hospital (ROH) Children and Paediatric Observation and Assessment Unit, the pilot helped to identify children and young people admitted to hospital with asthma or respiratory illness, who smoked or lived in a household with people who smoke. The pilot has allowed underserved communities in Oldham to access the NICE-approved innovations, FeNO and asthma biologics. The Pilot Evaluation can be found here.

Najma Khalid MBE, Founder & Director, Women’s CHAI Project- Care, Help and Inspire CIC joined one of the feedback sessions that took place as the project worked to co-produce the educational resources. She said: “It has been great for the Women’s CHAI Project to be part of the asthma focus groups with ABL Health and Health Innovation Manchester. These sessions gave Oldham Black and Minority Ethnics (BAME) women an opportunity to be a voice and to have a say in resources targeted for their community. The workshops were simple, easy to understand, engaging and the staff delivering the focus groups were professional, friendly and had a wealth of knowledge.

“In order to communicate effectively with different communities, it’s key that resources and workshops are delivered to meet their needs and are culturally sensitive. These focus groups were brilliant as they did exactly that and the women who attended felt that they were heard, and their views were valued. The mums also gained valuable awareness and key knowledge of asthma, smoking and support services, helping them to help make a difference in their homes and their community. We absolutely loved being a part of this journey.”

Cath Barrow, Senior Programme Development Lead at Health Innovation Manchester, said: “It has been an absolute pleasure to work with communities who were so enthusiastic to share their lived experience and wanted to co-design educational assets about asthma that provided key messages to parents and children. The range of community stakeholders that came forward was amazing and the children came with creative and innovative ideas that we were able to make into posters, leaflets, and animations.

“The community were with us every step of the way from creating and generating the ideas to co-designing and testing the educational assets.  We are incredibly grateful for their insights and experience that has made this project such a success. These resources are having an impact which is demonstrated through the social media metrics which have already had over one-million impressions. They can be really proud of what they’ve achieved.”

Jane Coyne, Treating Tobacco Dependency Programme Lead at NHS Greater Manchester said: “The FeNO pilot has been extremely impactful in championing a whole-household approach for better asthma management in children and young people. Key to the pilot’s success has been striking a balance between providing effective support and treatment where it’s needed most – whilst also tackling a key risk factor in asthma, exploring smoking behaviours or exposure to second-hand smoke.

“Providing smoking cessation support for both the asthma patient and their family, has been critical to positively impact health outcomes for children and young people and their household, creating more smokefree homes across the city-region. This pilot forms part of a blueprint that can be delivered in other areas of high asthma prevalence – helping to provide healthy starts for children and young people and drive our aims of a smokefree city-region by 2030.”

Liam Wilson, Digital media & Website Manager at ABL Health, said: “The Innovation for Healthcare Inequalities Programme (InHIP) in Oldham demonstrates the power of community engagement and collaboration in addressing healthcare disparities, especially in understanding asthma and its links to smoking in children and young people. By involving diverse community members in decision-making, we ensured that solutions resonated with and reflected their unique needs, while gathering both qualitative and quantitative data to inform the development of educational resources.

“Engaging individuals from varied backgrounds, races, genders, and age groups enriched the resources produced, making them more relevant and accessible. The focus groups brought together people from different communities, providing insights that shaped materials on asthma management particularly in relation to the various triggers, smoking cessation, and the impact of second and third-hand smoke.

“Overall, working collaboratively with Oldham communities, InHIP and the wider team, has laid a strong foundation for improving health outcomes in underserved areas, highlighting how inclusive engagement can yield impactful and sustainable solutions.”

View our co-produced education resources: https://gmintegratedcare.org.uk/childhood-asthma/

Implementing our work:

As part of this work, Health Innovation Manchester project team have produced two documents which provide detailed insight into the project undertaken in Oldham in the form of an Implementation Toolkit and a Pilot Guide. These documents highlight:

• the importance of understanding people and place when transforming services
• how to implement a broad range of activities and approaches; focusing on individuals, community, and environmental influences on human behaviour
• the initiative that was developed and delivered in partnership between NHS Greater Manchester and Health Innovation Manchester

The documents also outline the steps taken to target asthma management in children and young people, and include a practical toolkit developed by Health Innovation Manchester which provides resources to help teams replicate this approach.