Verbal update by Terri Roche (Director of Public Health) and Julie Kitlowski (Clinical Chair, Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group)
Minutes:
Julie Kitlowski report on the workshop held on 16th March to address health inequalities and healthy life expectancy. Key themes that were felt to make a difference if all partners were aware of the commitments were pulled together:-
Making Every Contact Counts issues – which should include encouraging the most deprived and hard to reach to go for Healthchecks and have Champions in the community who would be able to give their stories about how they had managed to make significant life changes by personal testimony
Community Champions – there were some really good stories of people from hard to reach communities standing up and being prepared to say how they had made a difference. The aim was to have health champions/more health ambassadors
Keeping Active – All partners knew exactly what was available so it was incumbent on them to pass that information onto their clients and staff and attempt to try and link up the education of what was available
It was important that employers, businesses, volunteers etc. worked together with the Partnership Group and business community or it would not progress in the way needed to make a difference in health inequalities. It was key to engage better with partners and businesses
Measure Outcomes – the number of patients having Healthchecks could be measured as well as the number of Community Champions and those that signed up the various activity events
Terri Roche reflected that the notes from the workshop did not have a strong emphasis on NHS Healthcheck but agreed that it was important that harder to reach communities had support had access to the right health care services in a timely manner. This could include improving the uptake of national screening and vaccinations programmes and early presentation of symptoms at Primary Care.
Discussion ensued on employment and business and linking in with the discussions taking place around the Sheffield City Region (SCR). The most effective way of tackling inequalities was money and that usually came from employment. There was a danger if the Board did not influence the SCR agenda, access to employment for those who experienced barriers could make the inequalities worse.
Terri Roche reported that the working group for Theme 5 had not met as yet. There was an outcome based accountability Safer Rotherham Partnership workshop taking place on 26th April, 2016, and it was felt that some of the actions that needed to be in Health and Wellbeing Strategy would “fall” out of that. The group would then look at the gaps and who else needed to be pulled in
Chris Edwards and Louise Barnett gave a brief report on the Sustainability and Transformation Plan (South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Equality Plan). Chris, Louise and Sharon Kemp were meeting on a weekly basis to pull the Plan together. It covered health and wellbeing and had links through the whole Sheffield City Region. There were very tight timescales for its submission which would not coincide with the meetings of the Board. A submission had been made on 15th April with a further submission required by the end of June. There was to be an engagement event on 25th April.
Resolved:- (1) That the update on the Health and Wellbeing Strategy be noted.
(2) That an update on the Sustainability and Transformation Plan be submitted to the next meeting of the Board.
Action: Chris Edwards, CCG