Welcome,
I am pleased to introduce you to our new HSE Health & Wellbeing e-zine. We plan to keep you up to date on our various programmes of work to promote health and wellbeing and deliver on the Healthy Ireland Framework through the HSE.
This has been a tough year for us all, with many of our Health & Wellbeing colleagues redeployed and working to support our front-line services in the battle against COVID-19. It has been a challenge for us to deliver on our initial plan for HSE Health and Wellbeing this year and to respond to the evolving health and wellbeing needs due to COVID-19.
I am immensely proud of how all HSE Health & Wellbeing staff have responded to the call by supporting the crisis response to Covid-19 and in some cases, changing their ways of working in order to continue and redevelop the programmes of work for the benefit of the public and all HSE staff. As a result of Covid-19 we have seen an increase engagement and activity in the health and wellbeing area and we are continuing to build on our communications capacity to ensure we can continue to work with our wide range of external partners to meet the needs of our various audiences.
Through the ongoing implementation of Healthy Ireland in the HSE, Health and Wellbeing provide evidence-based programmes to support people to improve their health and wellbeing. We support the roll out of Healthy Ireland through our Policy Programmes, which focus on Tobacco, Alcohol, Healthy Eating and Active Living, Healthy Childhood, Sexual Health & Crisis Pregnancy and Mental Health & Wellbeing. We develop and deliver our work in partnership with a wide range of internal and external colleagues.
Internally Health and Wellbeing is delivered through the Hospital Groups and Community Health Organisation’s. They deliver their own Healthy Ireland plans supported by local Health Promotion and Improvement and Health and Wellbeing staff. External partners from the statutory, voluntary and community sector give us the ability to reach many of our target groups to respond to key demographics and those most in need. In partnership with HSE Communications we deliver public facing awareness campaigns to promote healthier lifestyles. You may have seen some of these, such as QUIT, Ask About Alcohol, MyChild, START and Sexual Wellbeing. For more information about these initiatives and the rest of our work watch our video below.
This year we have reinvented our ways of working, with COVID-19 restrictions in place, all Health & Wellbeing face to face training is suspended, however I am delighted to say that, like our alliance of partners, we have brought a lot of our content on-line throughout the year in order to keep people up to date and connected to current health and wellbeing information. In the second half of 2020, we have hosted and presented at a number of webinars and reached thousands of people providing updates and insights on our health and wellbeing work.
Finally, do check out our Health & Wellbeing Countdown to Christmas Calendar with lots of tips for staying healthy over the festive season here. I wish you and your nearest and dearest, a very happy and healthy holiday season. HSE Health & Wellbeing are already planning for 2021 and we will be sharing some of those new initiatives with you in our next edition in the New Year.