Talk to people across health, social care or neighbourhood planning and you’ll hear a consistent message: prevention matters. It’s written into strategies, plans and policies. People believe in it.
But day-to-day, it often loses out to what feels more urgent - people in crisis, rising demand, issues that can’t wait. So prevention slips down the list. Not because people don’t value it, they do, but because in a system under pressure, it’s not a priority.
The problem isn’t just measuring prevention
When people talk about prevention, often the first challenge they highlight is measurement. How do you measure something that didn’t happen? How do you evidence benefits that might take years to materialise?
Those are real challenges but, in our view, the bigger issue is more fundamental: much of the day-to-day work happening in communities isn’t visible. If it isn’t seen, it isn’t counted and if it isn’t counted, it’s easy to overlook.
A lot is happening in communities. We just can’t see it.
Every day, neighbours help neighbours, volunteers give their time and local groups run activities and support. But this work is often spread across different organisations, held in separate systems or not recorded at all. So decision-makers can’t see it, nor can they measure it.
Visibility changes how systems work
This is where community infrastructure really matters. When support is easy to find, organisations are connected and local groups are part of the bigger picture, the system begins to function differently.
Knowledge isn’t trapped in people’s heads. Work isn’t duplicated. Existing support isn’t overlooked. Instead, everyone can see what’s actually happening - and that’s when prevention can start to take root.
What this might look like in practice
At Made Open, we’re working to make community activity more visible, so councils, health services and community organisations can better understand what’s happening locally.
With better visibility, we can begin to explore how community engagement might relate to prevention. For example, using data from Devon Connect:
- Over 4,000 volunteer hours have been logged. Research suggests active volunteering may reduce GP visits by around 12% per year (source: The King’s Fund; NCVO). This could translate to roughly 500 fewer GP visits.
- The 3,500+ recorded social connections could help reduce loneliness, in line with research showing 30–40% reductions through regular social interaction (source: Campaign to End Loneliness; NHS England). This could potentially benefit 1,050 - 1,400 people.
- Over 3,000 community activities have been logged, which may contribute to a 1–5% reduction in emergency admissions (source: The Health Foundation). This could potentially affect anything from 30 to 150 people.
- With over 5,500 members, participation may be linked to 20–25% improvements in mental wellbeing (source: Mind; World Health Organisation), potentially benefiting as many as 1,375 people.
These aren’t outcomes we can claim - but they illustrate what might be possible when community activity is visible and connected.
Similarly, we've been told that Warrington has seen a 4% reduction in A&E attendance in the last 12 months. We certainly can’t say the Living Well Warrington platform has caused this, it hasn’t, but what is clear is that better visibility, joined-up services and strong community infrastructure all play a part.
Making prevention tangible
Over time, our hope is that prevention stops being an abstract principle everyone agrees with but fails to see. It becomes something we can point to, track and learn from.