When Amina Ismail, Senior Community Mobiliser at LSTM and Community Innovation Team (CIT) Coach at ReCITE, spoke with Jane Caddick, Primary Care Programme Manager, Knowsley Place, the conversation centred on what it really takes to improve immunisation uptake in communities and what we can learn from doing things differently.
Jane has been an integral part of the Healthy Heroes Community Innovation Team in Knowsley, working across partners to strengthen collaboration and improve outcomes for local people. Her reflections offer a powerful insight into the value of community-led approaches and place-based leadership.
Starting with partnership and purpose
Jane’s involvement in the Healthy Heroes CIT grew naturally from her role working across primary care, public health and wider partners in Knowsley.
“Immunisation uptake had been a consistent challenge across several communities, and the Healthy Heroes CIT offered a practical way to test new, community led approaches.”
Rather than being a standalone initiative, the work built on existing relationships across general practice, the Explore Partnership, public health and the voluntary sector thus creating a strong foundation for innovation.
Why Knowsley, why ReCITE
As Jane explains, Knowsley provided an important context for this work, with longstanding health inequalities and variation in immunisation uptake across communities.
“ReCITE is a programme that brings together local partners and communities to understand the barriers to vaccination and codesign new solutions.”
In Knowsley, those barriers are complex and deeply rooted including lower uptake in childhood vaccinations, gaps in MMR coverage, and access challenges for families with complex needs or living in areas of deprivation. Alongside this, vaccine hesitancy, misinformation and variation between neighbourhoods highlight the need for an approach grounded in local insight and trusted relationships.
Doing things differently: starting with listening
A key theme throughout the conversation was how the Community Innovation Team deliberately took a different approach.
“Instead of starting with a fixed intervention, the team began with listening, spending time in neighbourhoods, understanding lived experience, and letting the design of solutions be driven by local voices.”
This meant moving away from traditional programme delivery models and towards something more relational, flexible and responsive. And at the heart of this was trust:
“Vaccination decisions are influenced by trust - trust in people, not just systems.”
The power of partnership
The work brought together a wide range of partners including the ICB, Knowsley Council, primary care, community services and Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations.
“The partnerships were effective because they were built on openness, shared purpose, and an equal voice for community partners not just statutory services.”
Each partner contributed something different, from data and service delivery to community insight and trusted relationships. Jane highlights the importance of place-based leadership in making this possible:
“Place-based leadership ensured everyone was aligned around Knowsley’s priorities, created the conditions for innovation, and helped remove barriers.”
What has changed so far
While still evolving, the work is already showing signs of impact.
“We’ve seen increased engagement with families, better understanding of local barriers, improved relationships between services and communities, and early signs of improved uptake in areas where rapid tests of change were piloted.”
Just as important, the approach has strengthened how partners work together:
“We’ve also enhanced our ability to tailor messaging and outreach based on real community insight.”
Learning to slow down
One of the strongest reflections from Jane is the importance of taking time to listen and build trust.
“Key learning includes the value of slowing down to listen, the importance of trust, and the benefits of co-designing solutions rather than imposing them.”
Maintaining momentum required consistency and presence:
“Being present in communities, not just consulting and leaving, also helped build credibility.”
Looking ahead: from project to approach
For Jane, the learning from ReCITE goes far beyond immunisation.
“It demonstrates the power of community insight and coproduction in any prevention effort.”
There is clear potential to apply this approach more widely. But as Jane remarks:
“Sustaining it requires continued input and investment in community partnerships, capacity within VCSE organisations, and leadership that supports experimentation.”
A shift in how we work
Reflecting on her experience, Jane highlights what has mattered most on a personal level:
“Seeing communities feel heard and valued has been incredibly rewarding.”
Ultimately, the ReCITE approach represents a broader shift in how systems work with communities:
“We need to change the emphasises from thinking we know what is right for our communicaties to working with them for them.”
As systems continue to focus on prevention and reducing inequalities, that shift may be one of the most important lessons of all.
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ReCITE is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation. |
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