The Health Service Executive (HSE) Making Every Contact Count (MECC) programme aims to support health professionals to have structured conversations (called brief interventions) about healthy eating, smoking, alcohol and drug use, and physical activity with patients in routine healthcare appointments. In the ‘Making MECC Work’ project, funded by a Health Research Board Applied Partnership Award, the HSE MECC Team and researchers at the Health Behaviour Change Research group are working together to maximise the chances of programme success.
Project Plan
We want to find out what makes it easy or difficult for healthcare professionals to deliver Making Every Contact Count (MECC) brief interventions. We also want to know what patients think about receiving MECC interventions. We use surveys, interviews and focus groups to gather evidence. We will work with our stakeholders to develop a collaborative implementation strategy to improve MECC.
Team
Our team is led by Professor Molly Byrne (Academic Principal Investigator) and Dr Maria O’Brien (Knowledge User Principal Investigator). Our team consists of HSE staff members, researchers from the Health Behaviour Change Research Group, members of the Health Psychology Public Advisory Panel and national and international academic co-applicants and collaborators. The team also work closely with the HSE MECC Implementation Group.
News
You can find out more about how the ‘Making MECC Work’ project is progressing here, along with news items and project publications.
Knowledge User Principal Investigator
“Healthcare professionals across the HSE have supported the implementation of the MECC programme and some really great work has taken place in integrating brief interventions into practice. This research is a very important step in the further implementation of the MECC programme across the Health Service to learn from the successes and challenges which have been experienced in this process”.
Academic Principal Investigator
“The HSE Making Every Contact Count Team and researchers from the Health Behaviour Change Research Group at NUI Galway are working together to understand how MECC is being implemented across a range of different settings in Ireland. We aim to bring together the perspectives of healthcare professionals, patients and policy makers to optimise and scale up the implementation of the MECC programme”.
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Email us: info@makingmeccwork.com
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