Have Intergroup notify GSO that you have been elected and then set up your AA email. Share this with your local telephone service and other Intergroup officers for Health enquiries.

Talk to outgoing or previous HLOs about work in your Intergroup before you were appointed. Hopefully they will be able to handover any records, contacts, and resources.

If there has been no Intergroup HLO in post for some time and you are unsure how to get started speak to others in service at yours or neighbouring intergroups. Contact the Regional HLO, and/or the Health Sub-committee member who serves your Region or the Trustee for Health (they can be contacted via GSO) who will help get you started.

Read the AA Service (especially chapter 6: AA and Healthcare in the Community) & Structure Handbooks for Great Britain. GSO will post these to you for free.

Attend Intergroup meetings and report on health activity. Send these reports to the Regional HLO.

Attend Regional workshops where you will meet other Intergroup HLOs and can share ideas, experience and coordinate activities.

Attend the Health Seminar at GSO in York (held every three years).

Prepare proposals to carry the message within the Intergroup area (see ideas for health activity). Start with simple ideas and build up from there. Once you have started to make contacts, use them to network and find other opportunities.

Whatever problem you are having, someone else has had them and will freely share their solution. Health Liaison work, like all liaison work, is a team effort involving other members and disciplines. Wherever possible invite other members to health liaison activities. They will appreciate participation in primary-purpose outreach service.

Do not forget that our message is very simple. We are working with health and social care professionals to build their confidence in and understanding of AA. Hopefully they will then suggest to a patient who has a problem with alcohol that they attend a local meeting, so they can meet others, with the same problem, who can help.

Establish and maintain contact with Intergroup HLOs within your Region and keep in regular contact with them. Schedule regular meetings of Intergroup HLOs where they will share experience and exchange ideas for future activity.

Attend Annual Regional Health Liaison Meetings in York.

Gather Intergroup reports on Health activity in the Region and consolidate for a report to send to Region and the Health Sub-committee.
Visit Intergroup meetings to encourage Intergroup HLOs.

Take part in other events as appropriate. Join or establish a Regional PI/Health committees. It is much more effective and enjoyable to work as part of a team. Once you have started to make contacts, use them to network and find other opportunities.

The following list of activities offer some ideas of how we can work towards our primary purpose.

• Establish what is already happening in your area.
• Create a list of healthcare contacts in your area, such as hospitals, medical training establishments, treatment centres, mental health charities, GP surgeries, pharmacies, local authority public health and wellbeing teams, alcohol support services and drug and alcohol professionals
• Look for opportunities to have a stand at local public events
• Invite/accompany professionals to open AA meetings
• Look for opportunities to give talks to groups of health and social care professionals of all types
• Develop contact with medical training facilities and universities with the objective of getting Open Meeting Workshops included in their curriculums
• Establish contact with local government health and wellbeing teams which have alcohol advisers.
• Look for opportunities to display AA literature, always asking permission first.
• Find out if there is an Alcohol Liaison Nurse or Liver Specialist Nurse at hospitals in your area and contact them to see if you can work together.
• Establish a “health team” of members to work with you and to cover local opportunities.
• Assist local AA groups in developing relationships with local medical and social care establishments.

My name is Jane and I am both HLO for my local Intergroup and Regional HLO supporting 8 other Intergroup HLOs.

I really walked into the Region role initially as the vacancy was announced at the Region meeting – Is anyone available to take up the post, and the silence echoed around the room.

I have always worked within the Health care system but had avoided service related to it, as it was a little too close to home. That silence in the meeting, created space to think and I realised I had no real reason to say no and that was that. Picking up the Intergroup role at the same time made complete sense as I could not really offer wider Regional support if I had not created a local role and understood what does and does not work.

I treated both roles very much like getting sober. I reached out for help; spoke with others who had done it before, no matter where; read what was suggested and shared honestly. Fellowship and connection with others in a similar situation has proved invaluable. This is at all levels and in all disciplines of the fellowship as health touches on so many of the other disciplines including PI and Employment.

I offer one slight warning. For me working within the NHS system offered an artificial confidence which actually got in my way. I made presumptions about understanding the ways of working and the role I could play in supporting AA and the message. This I constantly had to park. My presumptions stopped me being curious as I thought I had the answers and curiosity is where the real learning is. Now I go into every Health Service session with a clearer understanding of the hat I have on. I am there as a recovering alcoholic to help share the message of AA. How that message is perceived is not within my gift.

My advice is to be brave and give it a go. You are your own message of recovery with the fellowship behind you and truth to guide you. I have made some mistakes, had some rich emotional successes and developed real friendships. What do you have to lose. Give it a go.

My name is Robin, and in the last ten years I have worked in Health at Intergroup, Region and on the Health Sub-committee. I first got involved on the fringe of PI work some years ago helping Intergroup officers with various activities. One of these was covering a stand at Crawley Hospital and at the end of the event the lady I was with asked me if there was any reason why I could not take on the job of HLO at Intergroup. I answered give me 24 hours and I will come back to you, calculating that I would be able to think of that reason. I could not ….so I got the job!

I was initially hesitant because of my perception of the scale of the task, my lack of any knowledge of the health service, and uncertainty about where to start. The bit of advice that got me going was if in the next three years you talk to one medical professional who talks to one problem drinker who attends one AA meeting you will have been a success. My fear about lack of knowledge of medical matters and structures was drastically reduced when it was pointed out that I had lived experience of the problem, and was familiar with our message and that was all I needed.

The next and possibly the most important advice I picked up on was not to try and work alone. The Intergroup PI officer (the lady who got me into it in the first place) and I formed a PI team and our first presentations were to three mental health charities and the Samaritans. When we had finished these we were up and running and have now made presentations and conducted Open Meeting Workshops with many medical professionals. Along the way I have been privileged to work with some brilliant people, made lasting friendships, had some moving experiences, and have always felt it was time well spent.

When we carry the AA message to health and social care professionals we should be conscious of the audience. First year medical students will have different experiences of problem drinkers to those of practicing paramedics. As we are working with professionals we should always aim to give a structured and practised presentation.

These resources can form a basis for you to build upon. If members produce material which they feel has been successful, please send it to the General Service Board, Health Sub Committee.

Resources relevant to HLOs
• Health video
• AA Service & Structure Handbooks
• AA pull-up banners: Steps, Traditions, Concepts, Helpline
• A brief guide to Alcoholics Anonymous
• How AA Members Cooperate with Professionals
• Speaking at Non AA Meetings
• The AA Member, Medication and other Drugs
• A message for professionals

Relevant papers by Non-Alcoholic Trustees (in the Health section of the Document Library

• Professor Jonathan Chick

There are five relevant papers in the Professionals section of the website

• Alcohol problems in older people – Dr Kieran Moriarty
• In case of emergency take the (12) steps – Mani Mehdikhani Clinical Psychologist
• NICE Work! The NICE Recommendation and Cochrane Evidence Review – Dr Kieran Moriarty
• Why I became a Non-Alcoholic Trustee – Dr Kieran Moriarty
• A GP’s view of AA – Dr James Douglas

Talks, presentations, and draft letters will be placed in the Health filestore.

Use AA literature and banners. Arrive early to set up, enlist help to keep the stand attended throughout the event. Create a form for enquiries and contact details to be passed on to the relevant Intergroup/Region to follow up. Bowls of sweets on the table can be a good ice-breaker.

Educational establishments can be approached for the opportunity to give talks or Open Meeting Workshops for their students. These include universities or schools of medicine and colleges with health and social care departments who provide courses for nursing, medical students, physician associates, podiatrists, psychiatry, mental health nursing, paramedic practice, health scientists, and counselling. It is also worth considering GP Vocational Training Schemes which are run by NHS trusts.

The initial concept for OMW came from a 2007 Article in About AA US Newsletter for Professionals concerning a training program for Doctors in New York City, which paired first year medical students with AA members. This idea was developed by the Netherlands Intergroup who wished to take mental health nurses to an open meeting. One of the nurses suggested bringing the meeting to the Nurse’s Institute and in Utrecht January 2015 they held what they called a Masterclass for Mental Health Nurses. Since 2014 we have developed these original ideas and now frequently take open meetings to medical and social care professionals.

The concept works because it allows us to cover more professionals by us going to them instead of them coming to us, and if we can arrange OMW’s in training establishments it gives us

• a venue, free of charge
• time with our audience
• an audience who have time to focus

Regular workshops are held at medical training establishments and universities throughout the country and for GP Vocational Training Schemes. Workshops have also been successfully run for professionals in other venues such as town halls, outside of a medical/educational environment. The open meeting can be the centrepiece of a PI event attended by professionals from organisations such as mental health charities, substance misuse services, police, community nurses and local government officers.

Our objective in running workshops is to make those attending more aware and confident in AA, so they positively recommend AA to problem drinkers with whom they come into contact.

Workshops also have the spin off benefit of introducing service to members, who are new to service outside their group.

Members Involvement: Experience has shown us that a team of five or six members with a good gender/age/length of sobriety mix is ideal. At first the OMW concept can seem daunting, but in practice is familiar.

How to get the opportunity: Because of the time and size of audience ideally required start off by targeting medical training establishments. Personal introduction through networking has proved the most successful contact method.

The concept will work in any situation where we can gather a group of interested professionals for one and a half to two hours in a suitable environment.

If we are structured and professional in our approach and delivery an OMW can be seen by tutors as a reliable/different way of filling a slot in the curriculum of any educational establishment.

Method: A set of tools to help run the OMW workshops which can be found in the health section of the document library. These include an introductory letter to interested professionals, members’ briefing, session plan, introductory presentation and evaluation handout.