This guideline covers community engagement approaches to reduce health inequalities, ensure health and wellbeing initiatives are effective and help local authorities and health bodies meet their statutory obligations.

The guideline complements work by Public Health England on community engagement approaches for health and wellbeing.

Recommendations

This guideline covers recommendations on:

Who is it for?

  • Health and wellbeing boards, directors of public health and other strategic leads who plan, commission, scrutinise or provide local health and wellbeing initiatives in collaboration with local communities
  • Local authorities, the NHS and other public sector organisations with a statutory obligation to carry out community engagement activities
  • Commissioners of community engagement initiatives
  • Community and voluntary sector organisations
  • Members of the public

Guidance development process

How we develop NICE guidelines

This guideline updates and replaces NICE guideline PH9 (published February 2008).

Your responsibility

The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.

All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.

Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.

Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.