Community Wellbeing Champions, Leicester City Council
Evaluation in progress. Expected completion February 2027
At a glance
Community Wellbeing Champions (CWC) is a public health programme in Leicester that works with local community groups, charities, and trusted people in the community. These partners help gather information about people’s health needs, what helps them stay well, and what makes it harder to access support. This information is then used by Public Health at Leicester City Council to improve health messages, support, and services so they better meet people’s needs. The programme aims to reduce health inequalities by reaching and supporting people who often have worse access to care and poorer health outcomes. The evaluation aims to understand how the CWC programme helps improve wellbeing and reduce health inequalities. It also looks at the impact the programme has had and finds key lessons and recommendations to improve how it is delivered in the future.
What does the evaluation mean for Local Government?
This evaluation will help Leicester City Council understand how well the Community Wellbeing Champions programme is working. It will look at how champions put the programme into practice and what impact it has on the wider community. It will also explore how working together helps build trust and strong relationships between the champions, Leicester City Council’s Public Health teams, and local communities. The findings will show how the programme contributes to improving wellbeing and reducing health inequalities.
How are the public involved in the evaluation?
We have formed an evaluation steering group which includes both champions and members of the community. This group will meet approximately four times during the evaluation. The group will offer local insights and context, review evaluation findings and help develop key messages and recommendations. They will play a key role in how we share the findings from this evaluation and will help co-produce the research outputs that we develop.
Evaluation Details
What are the Community Wellbeing Champions?
The Community Wellbeing Champions (CWC) are a network of local groups and trusted people in Leicester. They work together to help others in Leicester stay healthy and well. They do this by sharing useful information on health and wellbeing, supporting local communities, and helping different organisations work better together.
The network is run by the Public Health team in Leicester. It focuses especially on helping communities where people may have poorer health or find it harder to get the support they need.
Why is an evaluation necessary?
The evaluation aims to understand how the Community Wellbeing Champions programme works, and what difference it makes to the people who live in Leicester
What are the main research questions?
The research team spoke to people working in the Community Wellbeing Champions team and in the wider Public Health team. Everyone worked together to come up with the key questions that should be answered.
These questions are:
- How do the Champions use the information shared within the CWC Network to help people in the community?
- What difference do people think the CWC Network makes in the wider community?
- How does working together and helping each other build trust between the Champions, Leicester City Council Public Health, and the community?
How will we answer these questions?
The evaluation will have two separate parts focusing on different aspects of the Community Wellbeing Champions programme. It will use a mix of different research methods to get a full picture of how well the programme works.
Firstly, the evaluation will do two surveys. The surveys will help us gather information on the following:
- How the Community Wellbeing Champions make use of the health and wellbeing information and resources shared within the network by Public Health, the wider Council, partner organisations and other Champions
- What difference the CWC Network might make in the wider community
- Whether this way of working together helps build trust and strong relationships between the Champions, Leicester City Council’s Public Health team, and local communities.
Finally, we will run interviews and discussion sessions with champions, members of the community and those delivering the CWC programme at Leicester City Council.
Those who take part in the survey can also volunteer to take part in interviews or focus groups.
What happens with the results of the evaluation?
The findings will help Leicester City Council understand how well the Community Wellbeing Champions programme works – for example, whether it is good at sharing information between the Public Health and the local communities and if it builds trust between Public Health and the community.
The findings from the evaluation may be helpful to other communities who might be thinking of setting up similar projects. We will share the findings in lots of different ways for different people within Leicester and beyond. We will work with the Community Wellbeing Champions, the Public Health Team and wider communities in Leicester to find out the best ways to communicate our findings with the aim that they make a real difference.
Local Government / Partner(s)
Leicester City Council:
Nazira Vania, Project Manager (Community Wellbeing Champions)
Kate Huszar, Programme Manager (Social Isolation and Loneliness)
Dr Katherine Packham, Consultant in Public Health
Dr Annabelle Long, Programme Officer (Research)
Faye Russell, Project Manager (Leicester City Council Public Health) and Embedded Team Member (PHIRST Elevate)
PHIRST Elevate Research Team
Dr Jillian Manner, Dr Clare Sharp, Dr Sarah Janac, Dr Sam Dixon, Dr Paul Kelly, Dr Chloë Williamson
Contact: phirst@ed.ac.uk
NIHR Funding Award: NIHR176946