What is Making Every Contact Count?
Making Every Contact Count (MECC) is an approach to behaviour change that utilises the millions of day to day interactions that organisations and individuals have with other people to support
them in making positive changes to their physical and mental health and wellbeing. MECC enables the opportunistic delivery of consistent and concise healthy lifestyle information and enables individuals to engage in conversations about their health at scale across organisations and populations.
The fundamental idea underpinning the MECC approach is simple. It recognises that staff across health, local authority and voluntary sectors, have thousands of contacts every day with individuals and are ideally placed to promote health and healthy lifestyles.
- For organisations, MECC means providing their staff with the leadership, environment, training and information that they need to deliver the MECC approach.
- For staff, MECC means having the competence and confidence to deliver healthy lifestyle messages, to help encourage people to change their behaviour and to direct them to local services that can support them.
- For individuals, MECC means seeking support and taking action to improve their own lifestyle by eating well, maintaining a healthy weight, drinking alcohol sensibly, exercising regularly, not smoking and looking after their wellbeing and mental health.
MECC focuses on the lifestyle issues that, when addressed, can make the greatest
improvement to an individual’s health:
Stopping smoking
Drinking alcohol only within the recommended limits
Healthy eating
Being physically active
Keeping to a healthy weight
Improving mental health and wellbeing.
3 MECC training sessions aimed at volunteers and people working in the community, are now available to book on the Oxfordshire Training Hub website.
This training is a free, interactive online training , for anyone working with the public (face-to-face or via phone) in Oxfordshire in a voluntary role.
In response to previous feedback, we have decided to make them 2 hour long sessions with a 5 min break in the middle, so more time for practice/practical.
Participants clicking on the link will be taken directly to the booking page on their website:
- Tuesday 11th May – 10am – 12 noon Click here to book.
- Wednesday 19th May – 10am – 12 noon Click here to book.
- Tuesday – 22nd June – 10am – 12 noon Click here to book.