Community pharmacies in the UK see an estimated 1.6 million people a day €“ more than any other care provider €“ yet we do not always make the most of that by making every contact count (MECC). MECC is an approach to behaviour change that utilises the millions of interactions that occur every day between people to support them in making positive changes to their physical and mental wellbeing by providing lifestyle information.

Whether it is opportunistic, brief advice on the back of a prescription supply or the sale of a medicine, a more structured intervention such as a medicines use review or another service, or a proactive conversation with someone looking at your health promotion display, the potential impact of making every contact count in a pharmacy is considerable. So, what do you need to do to make this happen?

1. Get the basics right

• The team: to make campaigns really work in your pharmacy, you need an engaged, informed and empowered team. This takes good leadership. Having one or more health champions in your team who have successfully completed the Royal Society for Public Health Level 2 award in Understanding Health Improvement (a requirement in a Healthy Living Pharmacy) is a great starting point. Some pharmacies train all their patientfacing staff, including delivery drivers, who see some of the most vulnerable people in your community, with this award to ensure that the knowledge, skills and healthy living ethos are embedded across the team. Health champions will proactively provide health and wellbeing advice to the people they interact with, but they will also plan and lead health promotion campaigns, signpost people into other services either within the pharmacy or the local area, and they may also deliver services.
• The environment: ensure yours is a professional, health-promoting pharmacy that projects to the public the health and wellbeing ethos that your team are trained in. A health promotion zone equipped with current campaign leaflets, posters and display aids will create interest and stimulate conversations.
• The engagement: ensure an understanding of the needs of your community and the opportunities they create for your pharmacy business plus strong relationships with other providers of health, wellbeing and care services in your area to support two-way signposting and referral pathways.

2. Prioritise

The four most significant unhealthy lifestyle habits (smoking, alcohol consumption, obesity and physical inactivity) cost the NHS at least £14 billion a year, according to the King's Fund; the overall cost to society is much more. This is the scale of the challenge we face in health improvement. Health promotion, education, proactive engagement with the public and behavioural-change support through the activities of community pharmacy teams have a major role to play in this.

Local priorities relating to these big four issues, in addition to others, such as mental health (eg, dementia, depression and suicide), sexual health, physical activity, antimicrobial resistance, cancer screening, high blood pressure and substance misuse, may vary, so it is important that you understand what they are. This can be achieved by observing the people in your community and those who walk in for medicines or advice, but you can also research this through several sources, including:

• Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) €“ the local NHS, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and local authorities are required to consider the needs of their local populations and how they respond with effective commissioning of services to properly meet those needs. This assessment and the plan is the JSNA, and you can find your local one at digital. nhs.uk/jsna
• Longer lives (healthierlives.phe.org.uk/ topic/mortality) €“ this website highlights premature mortality across every local authority in England, and provides important information to help you improve your community's health
• Health profiles (healthprofiles.info) €“ these provide a health snapshot for each local authority in England. They are conversation starters, highlighting issues that can affect health in each locality
• Public Health Outcomes Framework (phoutcomes.info) €“ this looks at the wider determinants of health, highlights the differences in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy between different communities and has indicators for tracking progress relating to helping people making healthy choices and reducing the number of people living with preventable illnesses or dying prematurely.

3. Plan

Once you have determined your top three priorities, check to see if these match some local or national health awareness days, weeks or months or planned local campaigns to help you magnify the benefit of your efforts.

Planning ahead is key, so you should be looking up to three campaigns ahead, and you are likely to want to change your campaign every month. You must have everything in place before you press €go€. Sometimes it will work better than others, but it's about learning from what goes wrong as well as right.

The Tips for an effective campaign panel (right) highlights the critical elements, which include agreeing the topic. Think about what materials you require and where to source them or produce them yourselves. You need to ensure that everyone in the team knows about the topic and has the necessary information to confidently and competently have a discussion with a customer or patient or go out into the community to talk on the issue. Finally, you need to have the means to measure and record what you have achieved.