Northern England Clinical Networks

The Northern England Clinical Networks are made up of members from a wide range of specialisms across all related conditions who share a common aim of wanting to improve patient experience and outcomes.

The Networks are always developing and welcomes anyone who has an interest in improving the care for those experiencing poor mental health, dementia or a neurological condition to get involved.

Primary objectives

  • Identify and reduce health inequalities in this population
  • Improve access to and quality of services
  • Promote the principles of good mental health and well being
  • Achieve clinical excellence in care by identifying innovative effective practice and supporting its implementation across the Network
  • Actively engage patient, user, carer and public views to inform and shape our work
  • Develop and implement evidence based pathways of care.

Improving physical healthcare of people with mental illness

The overall programme of work focuses on improving the physical health of people with mental illness.  There are two key strands to this work:

  1. To ensure that service users are supported to make positive changes to their lifestyle:
    • as smoking is the largest direct cause of avoidable death in the UK and smoking amongst
    • people with mental illness remains high, we are focusing on this as our initial work stream.
  2. To support the CQUIN, improving physical health to reduce premature mortality in people with severe mental illness:
    • to ensure a complete assessment of physical health needs is carried out and shared between primary care, mental health services and with the service user;
    • to ensure that service users have access to appropriate smoking cessation, weight management and drug and alcohol services.

Contact us

Northern England Clinical Networks, NHS England, Waterfront 4, Goldcrest Way, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE15 8NY
Follow on Twitter @NorthNetworks

Who’s who

Clinical lead for Mental Health (Secondary care)
Dr Angus Bell, c/o

SCN Associate Director
Roy McLachlan,

Network Manager
Suzanne Thompson,