In late December 2021, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) made funding available to the Nottingham City Council to establish the ‘Community Health Champions’ program.

The aim was to enable trusted voices within communities to initially support the COVID-19 Vaccination program by:

Delivering key messages to diverse groups and communities
Dispelling myths about the vaccine
Helping develop local targeted communications
Provide information about how to get a COVID-19 vaccination and pick up on any concerns or problems.

That focus has since evolved into something robust, and community-centred.

Where are we?

We are working with communities to help build stronger community action for health, empower residents of Nottingham city to make healthier choices, and give them opportunities to make these decisions by empowering them with resources.

Our more than 200 Community Champions are a network of likeminded individuals and organisations. There’s a range of training and development opportunities, regular and timely health information in helping Nottingham individuals and communities to improve their health and wellbeing. Community Champions also get to engage with the current Public Health priorities and have opportunities to engage with others on a stronger level.

Some of the quotes we’ve had from our Champions are;

“When I made known to my friend that I was a community champion…then they realised people like me can actually go the council where they can air their views – they vented to me about their problem and asked me if I could pass on and do anything about it.”

Another Community Champion said: “This project enables people from all different walks of lives – whether they’re working/ not working, whether they’ve got a disability/Muslim/Christian/not religious/suffered domestic abuse – to have conversations with other people that they would never ever spoken to.”

The Community Champions Programme greatly reflects Nottingham communities and it has now gone beyond individual conversations; it has taken a collaborative asset-based approach, involving local skills, knowledge, and intelligence from residents and community groups, as to how local health and care services can be better designed and accessed. A three-tier model of individual champion, leader of volunteers champion and friends of champions enable engagement through training, weekly bulletins, events calendar and developing and implementing innovative projects through the small grants programme.

We also have opportunities to participate in co-design, focus groups, surveys, radio, short films and social media platforms facilitated by NCC’s Healthy Communities team. Volunteers have progressed to paid work in health or care roles. An independent evaluation highlighted the value, both to volunteers, communities and to the public health system.

In the Bulwell and Bulwell Forest wards, we can call on Maria Shakespeare of Crabtree Farm Community Centre and Jo Dexter of Mellish Sports Centre as two of our very active Community Champions. These exemplary individuals have continued to help us reach the area better but there’s a need to have more Champions from Bulwell in order to reach more people, connect better with individuals and groups and hear more Bulwell voices in the programme.

To be a Community Champion, please see more information on the attached images. (Click here)