East Brighton Health Hub: Addressing Health Inequalities In The Community

Every Friday morning at Robert Lodge Community Space, there’s a growing and dedicated team of community health and wellbeing professionals who are playing a pivotal role in helping communities access vital health and wellbeing support. 

Between 10am and 1pm, The East Brighton Health Hub offers an accessible and inclusive drop-in for those that are registered under any of the nine East and Central PCN surgeries and for those who aren’t registered with a GP at all.  

There’s a distinctly warm and inviting welcome from the reception team when entering the hub, and it’s immediately easy to recognise the benefits of running the hub from Robert Lodge; an open-access space that is familiar to residents.

Oonagh O’Brien, co-lead of the project along with Joe Walker, told East Brighton Trust:

“It’s important when patients come in that we try to tell them a bit about the hub, tell them that it’s put on by the GPs as they recognise the difficulties patients experience in getting an appointment. 

 When a patient is triaged at reception, a conversation takes place with the patient around ‘what matters to them’ and from that, staff will book someone into the right professional, often booking in to see more than one, providing a holistic approach.” 

On last week’s visit to the hub, the duty team included a mental health practitioner, a benefits and housing advisor, an occupational therapist and two pharmacy technicians who can help with medication. 

Sitting just feet away from each other, with private spaces available for patients that request this, their passion and dedication for addressing health inequalities in a collaborative way was genuinely moving. 

Oonagh explained:

“People will attend with a clinical issue, and will often have additional needs. There are many challenges that patients face locally, with the wider determinants of health, like social isolation, housing and food poverty. 

As we know, GP appointments are restricted and often patients get longer here than they would at a GP surgery.  

Clients can leave with an action plan.”  

 Born from community conversations, collaborative work with TDC, and forward-thinking PCN clinical leads, East Brighton Health Hub has been running since September of last year as a pilot for national initiative the ICT (Integrated Care Teams). 

With 70,000 patients under the East and Central PCN, and the socioeconomic challenges of the cohort, recent data confirmed that East Brighton is the most deprived area in East Sussex. 

Claire Burchell, TDC Community Development Manager told us:

“I think this is a brilliant idea, it breaks down the barriers to getting the types of support people need, in an accessible space. TDC is supporting a local volunteer buddying project if people wanted to access the service but didn’t want to go alone. 

The Community said it wanted more health services at a grassroots level, so the PCN East and Central responded by opening the Health Hub.”

Oonagh spoke about hopes for the future of the hub: “The main issue is capacity, and we hope to develop more partnerships with additional clinicians and voluntary sector workers who can support our staff.  

“If the pilot’s successful, the ideal goal is that each area has a health hub, to be working at neighbourhood level”

The profound impact of the East Brighton Health Hub is reflected in feedback from local residents: “It opened up more opportunities for people to find out about all the different services available, rather than going straight to the Doctor, and I didn’t have to wait.”

Another patient said:

“There’s an excellent level of information and advice – no further suggestions, except for increased funding to maintain this hub and the associated services.”   

If you’d like to find out more about the inspirational East Brighton Health Hub, you can do that here.