COVID-19 and Behavioural Science Evaluation Summary Report

Public Health Network Cymru: COVID-19 Webinar Series Evaluation Summary Report Marie Griffiths Public Health Network Cymru October 2020

Introduction Public Health Network Cymru is hosted by the Wider Determinants of Health Unit based within Public Health Wales and provides a range of support to practitioners and researchers across all sectors that influence any aspect of public health and health improvement in Wales. Amongst the services we provide is a seminar series that seeks to promote best practice based on existing and emerging evidence. The series covers a diverse range of topics and recent examples have included Nutrition in Early Years, Learning Disabilities and Homelessness.

A vision statement for the seminar series is presented below: The Public Health Wales Seminar Series will engage stakeholders on contemporary public health issues through lectures, debates and conversations, in order to enhance knowledge and understanding and contribute to present and future public health dialogue.

The aims of the seminar series are: • • •

To provide new opportunities for learning on a range of contemporary public health issues affecting wales; To develop public health knowledge amongst a wide audience; To share and further enhance the evidence base for public health.

Due to COVID-19 and the need to follow social distancing guidance, we have put our face-to-face annual seminar series on hold. However we felt it was important to continue to share and learn during this unprecedented time. Therefore we started a series of COVID-19 related webinars in July 2020. All previous webinars and their evaluation reports can be accessed on the Public Health Network Cymru website.

This evaluation report is for the fourth webinar which will be used to further plan and improve the user experience of future webinars.

COVID-19: Behavioural Science This webinar was held on 22 October 2020 using Microsoft Teams live events software. The webinar was facilitated by Christian Heathcote-Elliott, Principal Public Health Practitioner, Wider Determinants of Health Unit, Public Health Wales.

The webinar was delivered by team members of the Health Improvement Division within Public Health Wales.

The session discussed the application of behavioural science to current preventative activity in Wales and, using an example of young people and social distancing, described a process which intervention developers, from policy to communications, could use to increase their impact on the COVID-19 safe behaviours of the public.

The session also introduced some recently developed tools to use behavioural science in communications interventions to improve adoption and adherence of COVID-19 safe behaviours. We also learnt from participants about how they were using behavioural science in their practice and we could improve our offer to support those efforts.

The presentation is available by contacting publichealth.network@wales.nhs.uk or can be accessed on the Public Health Network Cymru website.

Evaluation Two hundred and twenty seven people registered for the COVID-19: Behavioural Science webinar and 120 (including 2 who did not register) attended on the day. The following table illustrates which sector attendees represented on the day: Sector Public Health Wales Central Team Public Health Wales Local Team Health Board NHS Other Welsh Government Local Authority Third Sector Academic Private Other

Number 29 23 14 3 8 16 6 15 4 2

Attendees were asked to complete an anonymous online evaluation survey via Survey Monkey following the webinar. The response rate to the survey was 18% (N=22).

Quantitative Results Survey respondents were asked whether or not they were members of Public Health Network Cymru. Fifteen attendees (12.5%) were members of the Network. In the week following the webinar the Network had 20 new member registrations many of which could be seen as a direct result of the webinar, and/or attendees promoting the Network in their areas.

As Public Health Network Cymru has only hosted a few webinars we felt it was necessary to ask attendees if they had any technical difficulties participating in the webinar. Two survey respondents experienced difficulties but these were as a result of difficulties with their own software.

Another question on the evaluation form asks delegates to rank from 1 to 5, (where 1 is not at all useful and 5 is very useful) ‘How useful did you find the webinar?’ Fifteen attendees answered 5 to this question with 7 attendees providing the answer of 4.

Attendees were asked to choose from a series of answers and/or provide their own response to the following question; ‘As a result of participating in the webinar which actions are you going to take (select all that apply)?’

Ten respondents stated they would share the presentation with colleagues and fifteen wanted to find further information on the topic. Nineteen respondents said they would discuss contents of the webinar with colleagues to inform action and eight stated they would recommend Public Health Network Cymru to colleagues. Five respondents answered ‘other’ with three stating they would ‘join the Network’ and two stating ‘they would apply it to their future work’.

It is important to note that attendees could choose multiple answers to this question.

Qualitative Results The evaluation survey also asked freetext questions. The responses to these questions are documented in the next sections.

Do you have any suggestions for future webinar topics?

“The dental public health response to COVID-19” “Anything on wider COVID-19 impacts, changes to health seeking behaviours or motivators for COVID-19 recovery” “Health inequality and inclusion” “More on applying behavioural science would be interesting” “The topics you are covering are already good” “Impact of the pandemic on public resilience” “It would be great to hear about any work the BC team does in the space of promoting vaccine uptake and obesity management, both massive topics in the space of COVID-19 management” “The impact of the pandemic on the most vulnerable families as Health Professionals were redeployed or moved to a different way of working” “Value based healthcare approach and public health”

Do you have any additional comments about the webinar?

Survey respondents were very positive about the webinar with notable comments shown below.

“It was very well presented and a great, quick session which works well online. I haven’t attended any webinars organised by the PH Networks before, but will definitely look out for others. I thought it worked really well. Thank you.”

“Very informative, thank you” “It was great, sorry I had to leave early” “Excellent presentation with exceptionally knowledgeable presenters” “Very insightful, really engaging, members of staff involved were so easy to follow” “Just thank you, it was really informative and useful” “Really interesting and well managed – thank you” “It was brilliant, well done all” “Interesting and informative. Well worth attending” “Really clearly presented, very knowledgeable speakers, informative, excellent webinar” “Very clear and pitched just right” “Presenters spoke with clear voices and was delivered at a good pace. Interesting reading other colleagues points of view during the Q and A session”

Live Question and Answer Session During the webinar attendees had the opportunity to ask questions to the presenter. These were put to the presenter by the facilitator during the remaining time of the event. Attendees asked the following questions:

“As comms professionals we all know that news/newsworthiness almost always means conflict. That’s why the fluffy piece comes at the end of the news and the conflict stories get the headlines. How do we resolve the need for creating newsworthy content with the need for not reinforcing/mentioning the undesirable behaviour?”

“What impact do you feel that the behaviours of government and political leaders has on behaviour of the general population? I.e. not following advice, but also messaging, such as ‘Don’t kill Granny’ in Preston” “Have you been asked to support health care settings to look at staff behaviours to reduce risk of HCAI for COVID19? We are having series of hospital outbreaks with very high mortality” “Tied up in this is how we communicate risk effectively which is really difficult. Any work happening on this?”

“What can we do to counteract conspiracy theories, and fake news that is affecting our ability to protect public health” “Media has been appalling. However how do we ensure public office staff are complying as these are influencing strongly, such as no masks and no social distancing by Andy Burnham and team on his news conference given Manchester’s figures - this does influence those in Wales also”

Live Question and Answer Session Continued...

“A lot of information for reflection. More important is how to convey the knowledge and awareness in order to control covid-19 with behavioural change” “Have you done any work with healthcare staff as we see spread in hospitals - fatigued and misunderstanding the ise of bubbles seem impactful?”

“Evidence of workplace transmission on the increase - particularly large employing organisations; and including healthcare staff (inside and outside of work!) - any plans to undertake work within such settings and groups?”

“Are the political leaders making rules that will involve them taking the vaccine too?”

“What can we do to make health professionals working onwards to be more compliant with guidelines off the ward environment?”

Additional comments captured from attendees immediately following the end of the webinar were as follows.

“Thank you very much. That was a very informative webinar” “Thank you - really useful and speakers well-spoken and paced nicely” “Thank you for the session. Lots of interesting information to consider” “Really useful webinar, thank you” “Thank you, great session. Really interesting” “Thank you for such an informative webinar. Very interesting and thought provoking” “Really enjoying the pace of this event. The speakers have such poise and lovely clear voices. The slides are so clear. Thank you” “I actually disagree - social distancing (reducing number of contacts - often to just your household) is very difficult! We are social creatures!”

“The news and newspapers are much quicker to talk about people who don’t ‘behave’ and needs to tell a lot more good news stories about people who are successfully following the rules and the impact that has on their immediate family and community. Needs to be reinforced as the norm” “Public Health Wales are asking staff to do just that and make a short video to say why they are social distancing or who they are social distancing for. That positive slant could appeal to people. Perhaps a wider public campaign along those lines would be a good idea” “Not sure how this is supported by Mr Johnson encouraging people to shop their neighbours if they’re perceived to be misbehaving” “The expertise in this lies in the private sector, such as those who drive the commercial determinants of health. Is Government buying this in? Are they just using private sector to do delivery e.g. Test/ Trace, very badly without including this element?”

“The Welsh Government guidance has been very clear and consistent. What I think is causing confusion is the media and the lack of emphasis on differing the rules in England and Wales. I am referring to national news and their use of ‘the UK’ when only commenting on rules/systems that apply only to England. This confusion will cause people to become frustrated and perceive something that is actually clear as confusing and just decide not to bother following”

Overall Summary Overall, the evaluation data from attendees who completed the survey and comments captured during and after the webinar illustrate that it was very successful and positively received.

The aims of the webinar have been met in the following ways:

To provide new opportunities for learning on a range of contemporary public health issues affecting wales The webinar provided an opportunity for delegates to increase their knowledge about COVID-19 and behavioural scthrough presentations about the latest policy, research and practice aspects of the topic. The webinars also gave people a chance to find out about how the COVID-19 response is developing across Wales.

To develop public health knowledge amongst a wide audience The webinars are aimed at people not only working in Public Health Wales and the NHS but from a range of sectors. Despite the majority of attendees being Public Health Wales colleagues, both central and local teams, it was encouraging to see a wide range of sectors attending the webinar including representation from Welsh Government, Local Authority, Academic and Third Sector organisations.

A number of delegates said that they would be disseminating the learning gained from these events to work colleagues to help inform action. Furthermore, the webinars allow for much larger audiences than our face to face seminars could accommodate. This combined with the webinar recordings and presentations being available to view via the website post event, enables the information from the day to be disseminated to a much wider audience from a range of sectors.

To share and further enhance the evidence base for public health The presentation from the webinar highlighted the current situation and some recently developed tools for this topic area to improve adherence to COVID-19 safe behaviours. Presenters also educated on how they were using behavioural science in their practice and how we could improve our offer to support those efforts. It is hoped that partnerships will be developed to further enhance some of the recent and emerging evidence to inform future practice.

Further Information Further information and recordings of the webinars are available on the Public Health Network Cymru website or by contacting publichealth.network@wales.nhs.uk