Implementation of Making Every Contact Count (MECC): developing a collaborative strategy to optimise and scale-up MECC.

Importance of the study:
Many chronic illnesses can be prevented if people adopt healthier behaviours. The Making Every Contact Count (MECC) programme, developed by the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE), aims to train all healthcare professionals to support patients to make healthier lifestyle choices during routine healthcare contacts. In this project, the HSE MECC Team and academic researchers will work together to create a strategy to optimise the roll-out of MECC at a national level and maximise the chances of programme success.

What we want to know?

What makes it easy or difficult for health services and healthcare professionals to support patients in making healthier lifestyle choices?
How do patients feel about discussing health behaviours and receiving support to change their behaviour during routine healthcare contacts?
How can we combine evidence into the MECC implementation strategy to make the roll-out of the programme successful in Ireland?

How will we do this?

Part 1: We will look at what influences healthcare professionals' implementation of the MECC programme using surveys and interviews. The survey will examine what makes it easy or hard to implement the MECC programme from a staff perspective. We will carry out the interviews at sites that have been particularly successful at implementing MECC, to see what we can learn about staff and organisational factors in successful sites that can be applied nationally.

Part 2: We will interview patients about their attitudes to, and experiences of, discussing health behaviour with healthcare professionals and receiving support.

Part 3: We will conduct a review of the international literature to combine with the evidence from healthcare staff (Part 1) and patients (Part 2), and use these to develop the implementation strategy at a workshop with healthcare professionals, patients, the study team, and those in charge of implementing the programme.

Award Date: 30 June 2019
Award Value: €239,988.45
Principal Investigator: Professor Molly Byrne
Host Institution: National University of Ireland, Galway
Scheme: Applied Partnership Awards