What is Making Every Contact Count (MECC)
Making Every Contact Count (MECC) is simply a chat about health. MECC conversations are person or patient-led and focus on what a person thinks they may be able to do to make a positive change to their lifestyle. They are often about ‘planting a seed’ for change or supporting someone to make a small step towards making a change.
A MECC conversation is a very brief intervention – no specific knowledge or expertise about the subject area is required.
Why is it important?
Make Every Contact Count (MECC) enables the delivery of consistent and concise health and wellbeing information and encourages 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 and care, local authority and voluntary sectors have thousands of contacts every day with individuals and are ideally placed to support health and wellbeing.
Do you need to be qualified?
MECC is intended for anyone who has contact with people to “Make Every Contact Count” and develop public health knowledge.
A MECC interaction takes a matter of minutes and is not intended to add to existing busy workloads, rather it is structured to fit into and complement existing engagement approaches.
Essex Wellbeing Service offer free training whether you’re an organisation, member of staff or member of the public.
How to have a MECC conversation
MECC uses open discovery questions, which are questions starting with ‘what’ or ‘how’. Open discovery questions allow the conversation to be led by the person and move the conversation away from staff giving solutions or offering suggestions.
For organisations, MECC means providing staff with the leadership, environment, training and information they need to deliver the MECC approach.
For staff, MECC means having the competence and confidence to deliver health and wellbeing 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 health and wellbeing.
MECC is for everyone, it is not restricted to one person, profession or organisation.
What training is available?
NHS England has developed a MECC elearning programme that is freely available to access. The programme is designed to help learners understand the factors that impact on a person’s health and wellbeing. It focuses on how asking questions and listening effectively to people is a vital skill for us all.
The elearning consists of three core modules:
- What is MECC and why it is important
- How to have a MECC conversation
- Signposting
There is an optional fourth session on Five Ways to Wellbeing and a MECC toolkit that contains a wealth of information and resources to help you implement MECC at an individual, team, or organisation level.
We offer additional bespoke training for organisations delivered via Microsoft Teams. This follows on from the elearning to help you put what you have learned into practice and understand more about the different services and support that is available through EWS. If you would like to arrange this for your organisation please email provide.essexwellbeing@nhs.net.
Get in touch
If you have any questions or would like to speak with someone about MECC, please email our team to discuss your MECC training needs.
