Making Every Contact Count is an approach to behaviour change that utilises the millions of day to day interactions that organisations and individuals have with other people to support them in making positive changes to their physical and mental health and wellbeing
MECC enables the opportunistic delivery of consistent and concise healthy lifestyle information and enables individuals to engage in conversations about their health at scale across organisations and populations.
The fundamental idea underpinning the MECC approach is simple. It recognises that staff across health, local authority and voluntary sectors, have thousands of contacts every day
with individuals and are ideally placed to promote health and healthy lifestyles.
- For organisations, MECC means providing their staff with the leadership, environment, training and information that they need to deliver the MECC approach.
- For staff, MECC means having the competence and confidence to deliver healthy lifestyle messages, to help encourage people to change their behaviour and to direct
them to local services that can support them. - For individuals, MECC means seeking support and taking action to improve their own lifestyle by eating well, maintaining a healthy weight, drinking alcohol sensibly,
exercising regularly, not smoking and looking after their wellbeing and mental health.
MECC focuses on the lifestyle issues that, when addressed, can make the greatest improvement to an individual’s health:
- Stopping smoking
- Drinking alcohol only within the recommended limits
- Healthy eating
- Being physically active
- Keeping to a healthy weight
- Improving mental health and wellbeing
Health Education England has developed a number of e-learning packages to support MECC. These are available free of charge from the e-learning for Healthcare website
There are also a number of MECC resources available on the Making Every Contact Count website, together with evidence of the benefits derived from a MECC approach to healthcare, plus useful information on sourcing quality training for your staff and volunteers.
http://www.makingeverycontactcount.co.uk
