Walk the Talk Conference Report 19th March 2008 Health, primary care and young people
- Introduction
- Primary care research
- Programme for the Walk the Talk conference
- Key learning from the workshops
- Speaker presentations
- Picture Gallery
- Seven steps to youth-friendly practice concertina
1. Introduction
Investing in young people's health is an important public health issue with significant potential to create a healthier future for Scotland. Health Scotland's Young People's Programme is committed to supporting partners to recognise and respond to the health and wellbeing issues affecting young people.
Since 2000, Walk the Talk has played a significant role in raising the profile of young people's health with a clear focus on the development of appropriate and accessible health services for young people.
In 2007, Health Scotland explored the support needs of primary care staff in providing youth-friendly services. The findings revealed that an appreciation of the barriers young people face in accessing health services is still under developed and practitioners are very receptive to support in helping them become champions in this area. In particular they asked Health Scotland for the opportunity to learn more and discuss issues with other colleagues as well as specific tools and information on young people's health issues, ideally via a website.
On the back of this research and in partnership with organisations such as the RCGP, the RCN and Healthy Respect, Health Scotland welcomed 200 delegates to the Walk the Talk conference on the 19th of March for high quality mix of national and international presentations, a diverse range of workshops as well as the chance to exchange ideas and views on next steps through a picture gallery.
Young people themselves were also a core part of planning and delivering the event and Health Scotland supported young people from right across Scotland to produce a Youth Voices DVD to show at the event, which told delegates in their language about their experiences and expectations of health services.
The conference gave delegates, including GPs, practice nurses and public staff an opportunity to understand the barriers facing young people, their key health concerns and some tools and techniques for involving young people and responding appropriately to them within their service. Delegates were encouraged to log onto the Walk the Talk website www.walk-the-talk.org.uk, formally launched by Shona Robison, Public Health Minister in the morning session.
The challenge now is to build on the momentum created at the conference and to encourage practitioners to champion the walk the talk approach within their service and to share their learning with others.
The publication of Better Health Better Care (External Link) provides us with a further push towards patient centred health services and providing health services which are youth-friendly is a key aspect of this policy drive.
Please keep in touch with us via the website or by emailing: walkthetalk@health.scot.nhs.uk
Good luck
Nuala Healy
Health Improvement Programme Manager: Young People NHS Health Scotland
2. Primary care research
The resource needs of primary care health care staff – a summary of the research carried out in the summer of 2007 on behalf of Walk the Talk. (PPT 440kb)
3. Programme for the Walk the Talk conference
Schedule of the day, workshop overviews and more information about the youth voices DVD.(PDF 52kb)
4. Key learning from the workshops
Workshop summaries to include the three most important take home messages from each of the 10 workshops. (Word doc 52kb)
5. Speaker presentations
A range of different speakers helped to make this event such a success. We have highlighted three of these below:
- Alastair Pringle – young people and healthcare: the Scottish context. (PPT 1.2mb)
- Chandra-Mouli Venkatraman – A framework for considering youth-friendly health services. (PPT 21.1mb)
- Dr Dick Churchill – Delivering youth-friendly primary care. (PPT 2.3mb)
6. Picture Gallery
A chance to look at the picture gallery from the event including delegates comments and ideas surrounding young people's health care. These pictures may be useful to print off in larger scale to use within staff training.
- Journal One (PDF 2.9mb)
- Journal Two (PDF 2.5mb)
- Journal Three (PDF 1.4mb)
7. Seven steps to youth-friendly practice concertina
A summary document to help health professionals consider seven key steps when developing youth-friendly services. You can also use our online interactive version in the taking action section.
