London is taking up the challenge to create places – environments, communities, workplaces – that truly promote health. Making every contact count is just the start. We think London can take it further.

In London our goal is it to support all frontline staff to have the right skills to start positive conversations about health and wellbeing with people they meet every day. We will do this by advocating a health promoting model that will address environmental, cultural and infrastructure enablers that can impact an individuals’ health. The interdependencies of this model are shown in the diagram below:

London’s definition for making every contact count is:

“Making every contact count (MECC) is a behaviour change approach that encourages positive health and wellbeing choices through individual, organisational and environmental interactions. It involves enhancing, identifying and acting on the opportunities to engage people in conversations about their health in a respectful way, to help them take positive action to improve their own health and wellbeing.”

A making every contact count conversation is the initial touch point that frontline staff have with patients and the public. It is commonly termed very brief advice. The basic level competency of the NICE behaviour change approach is shown in the diagram below.

In our first phase, we will also focus on London’s five most prevalent prevention challenges:

• Smoking
• Alcohol
• Physical activity
• Healthy eating
• Mental health and wellbeing