1. Health Liaison in London In London, we have two regions (North and South) and 17 intergroups (11 North, 6 South) During my time as regional HLO for LRN, we usually had 3-4 active intergroup HLOs at any one time There are approximately 20 NHS trusts in London and many more hospitals, and the intergroup boundaries often do not overlap with Trust boundaries One of the biggest challenges we faced was establishing reliable contacts with health professionals within the NHS Trusts Good contacts exist in several intergroups, but they take a long time and perseverance to establish

2. Highlights (intergroup level) We have a few intergroups where there are long-running special meetings for hospital patients (e.g. Royal Free Hospital) A new special meeting has started in Chelsea and Westminster hospital and the staff are now very supportive of AA In five hospitals, intergroups have purchased space on the back of hospital appointment cards

3. Region Level – Challenges In general, I have not had particular success with launching initiatives at the region level (most of the good work has been done by intergroup HLOs) One reason for this is that the geographical boundaries for the region do not overlap very well with the NHS boundaries I have made efforts to contact (for example) London Ambulance Service and NHS London, but the response from such initiatives has been poor.

4. Hospital Information Screens Following successful intergroup initiatives, I put a proposal forward to our regional assembly to use the plasma information screens in various NHS trusts This service is provided by a company called “HealthCare Messaging”, and normally costs £500 per screen, per year We negotiated a special rate with them, to use 53 screens across 8 NHS Trusts for £5000 + VAT. We split the cost and the work with London Region South We also negotiated with them to remove “sponsored by …” messages to abide by Tradition 6

5. Screen Locations NHS TrustHospitalsNo. ScreensVisitors per year Chelsea and Westminster C & W6 1 million St. Stephens2 Royal Free 31.2 million Imperial College Healthcare St. Mary’s3 2.2 million Hammersmith3 Charing Cross3 UCL UCLH6 1.4 million Heart Hospital1 NHNN1 RNTNE1 Moorfields 10 600,000 Ealing1 Northwick Park1 Mile End1 St Ann’s1 Bart’s Health St Bartholomew 31.4 million Royal London KCHKing’s College31 million St George’s 4~1 million Total-539.8 million