Advice on Prescription wins North West Coast Research and Innovation Award 2025

Citizens Advice Liverpool has won the Tackling Health Inequalities Award at the North West Coast Research and Innovation Awards for 2025.

Nominees included NHS organisations, charities, and other health sector collaborators across the North West Coast for their contribution to research pieces and innovative work.

Our nomination focused on findings from the research piece titled 'Evaluating the health impact and cost effectiveness of Citizens Advice on Prescription, a whole system approach to mitigate poverty over the life course'. The service helps over 9000 households a year with practical advice across welfare benefits, debt, housing and more, alongside wellbeing support, and the research showed consistent evidence of improved health and social outcomes for patients in the Core20 and Core20Plus categories.

News of the final shortlisting for the award was broken back in March, with Advice on Prescription coming up alongside Everton in the Community's BEAT Breathlessness and Edge Hill University's ArtS4Us, both positively contributing to reducing health inequality in Merseyside. The winner was announced at an awards ceremony on Thursday, 10th April in Liverpool.

Trophy and Certificate of Tackling Health Inequalities Award for Advice on Prescription at Citizens Advice Liverpool

Both Heather Jessop, CEO of Citizens Advice Liverpool and Debbie Nolan, Advice on Prescription Lead, were in attendance at the ceremony to accept the award on behalf of the team. In her speech, Heather shared her admiration for the team behind the project:

"Congratulations and well done to each and every one of the team who work on our Health Programme (Advice on Prescription). The evaluation that led to this award highlighted the significant difference your efforts are making to people's lives".

From Left to Right: Heather Jessop, CEO of Citizens Advice Liverpool, Clare Mahoney from NHS Cheshire and Merseyside, and Debbie Nolan, Advice on Prescription Lead at Citizens Advice Liverpool.

Both Debbie and Heather described winning the Tackling Health Inequalities Award as "the icing on the cake" on top of the impact declared from the research piece itself.

If you're wanting to find out more about our award-winning Advice on Prescription service, click here.