Getting winter ready: Why personalised care starts at home

When we talk about health and care, we often think about appointments, prescriptions, and diagnoses. But our podcast conversation with Elliot Kane and Adam Newman-Pring showed that health doesn’t start or finish in a GP surgery. It starts at home.

Elliot and Adam shared a simple but powerful idea: using flu and COVID vaccination clinics as a way to connect people with wider support. This approach opened up deeper conversations about personalised care, health inequalities, and the everyday factors that affect people’s ability to stay well.

About Elliot and Adam

Elliot Kane is Health Inequalities Implementation Lead and General Practice Assistant at South Lincoln Healthcare Primary Care Network.

Adam Newman-Pring is the Lincolnshire Healthy and Accessible Homes Lead based at Boston Borough Council.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW to listen to our conversation with Elliot and Adam

A story that changed the conversation

The idea to use flu and COVID vaccination clinics to connect people with wider support didn’t begin with a strategy document or funding bid. It began with a moment of human connection.

Elliot, then working as a general practice receptionist, recalls an older woman in her eighties arriving at the surgery in tears.

“She was heavily apologetic and felt as though she’d let us down because we were chasing some blood pressure readings from her.”

The reason for the delay was heartbreaking in its simplicity. Her home was so cold that she couldn’t take her coat off to fit the blood pressure cuff. Living alone and digitally excluded, she hadn’t come to the surgery to ask for help, only to apologise.

“That’s the really key part of that story,” Elliot explains. “She hadn’t come to us for help… because when your home is cold, or damp, or you’re struggling with energy bills, the last place you think is going to be able to help is your GP surgery.”

This moment exposed a gap that many people fall through: when health problems are rooted in living conditions, but support feels fragmented, inaccessible, or simply “not for people like me”.

Housing is healthcare

Cold, damp, and poorly maintained homes are not just uncomfortable, they are actively harmful. Elliot shares stark statistics that underline the scale of the problem:

“If you live in a damp or cold home, your likelihood of getting a chest infection doubles.”

He goes on to describe the wider impact:

“There are 5,000 new cases of asthma every year linked to damp homes… and 30,000 children under five admitted to A&E with respiratory conditions made worse by damp and mould.”

The cost is human, but it is also systemic. Cold homes alone cost the NHS around £1 billion a year, rising to £2.5 billion when all unfit housing is included.

Adam: “What we’re seeing is that housing is healthcare.”

Yet housing rarely features in traditional healthcare conversations.

This disconnect is precisely where personalised care must step in, by recognising that medical needs cannot be separated from the environments people live in.

Personalised care means meeting people where they are

One of the strongest themes in the discussion is the importance of trusted settings. People are far more likely to engage when support is offered somewhere familiar and safe.

GP practices, Adam explains, are uniquely placed:

“A lot of people trust their GPs to bring those additional services in.”

Rather than asking people to attend yet another event or navigate complex systems, the project brought support directly into flu and COVID vaccination clinics. These were people already taking steps to protect their health.

“You’ve made that first step. It’s more than just a vaccination. There’s other stuff out there.”

This is personalised care in action: recognising readiness, context, and timing, rather than expecting people to seek help in isolation.

Small, themed support that makes sense

Instead of overwhelming people with dozens of stalls and leaflets, the clinics focused on a small group of aligned services: housing advice, energy support, water affordability, and Age UK Lincolnshire

Adam explains why this mattered:

“There’s a narrative that makes sense to people. One stand leads onto another.”

This thoughtful design respects people’s cognitive load, time pressures, and emotional bandwidth - especially important for older adults or those already under stress.

It also reinforces a key principle of personalised care: relevance. Support only works if people can see how it applies to their own lives.

Feeling heard is part of care

Across four clinics, more than 1,600 people attended. Feedback revealed not just practical outcomes, but emotional ones.

Elliot: “70% said they felt more confident staying well this winter. And nobody told us they felt less confident.”

Perhaps most telling was one simple comment from an attendee:

“It was nice to feel heard.”

That sense of being listened to - without judgement, without assumptions - is central to personalised care. For many people living with deprivation, poor housing, or long-term conditions, being heard can feel rare.

Elliot: “It’s not just a housing issue. It’s a financial issue, a health issue, a practical issue. It’s multiple ways that people are impacted.”

Beyond digital: Personalisation for everyone

The project team were acutely aware that not everyone can access online resources. Digital exclusion, particularly among older adults, can make even the best websites ineffective.

The solution was simple but powerful: a clear, printable leaflet.

Elliot: “(The leaflet) provided a take-home condensed version of the conversations.” 

The leaflet worked across all housing types and tenures, deliberately avoiding assumptions about ownership or responsibility.

Adam: “It’s not about who owns your house. It’s about how you live in it.”

This universality made the support feel personal rather than prescriptive - another hallmark of good person-centred care.

Prevention, not firefighting

Timing mattered. By running the initiative in early autumn, the focus was on prevention rather than crisis response.

Elliot: “We were giving people help before the issues arose in winter, rather than firefighting in February.”

This proactive approach aligns closely with broader ambitions around prevention and population health, but crucially, it was grounded in real lives, not abstract policy.

Adam: “If people haven’t got the reason to look for something, we can’t expect them to find it.”

Conclusion: Personalised care is about seeing the whole person

This project didn’t require a new building or complex technology. It required curiosity, collaboration, and a willingness to look beyond traditional boundaries.

By listening to people’s stories, recognising the role of housing and loneliness, and offering support in trusted, accessible ways, the team demonstrated what personalised care truly looks like.

Elliot: “It’s about allowing people to thrive and not just survive over winter.”

Personalised care is not about doing more to people. It’s about doing things with them, in ways that make sense, feel safe, and respect the realities of their lives.

Sometimes, it starts with something as simple as asking: How is your home?