Issue - meetings

The Board received Harrow’s Draft Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

The highlights were:

a)              1 in 5 children were overweight or obese at reception; 1 in 3 children were overweight or obese at year 6; and the percentage of 5-year-olds with experience of visually obvious dental decay was high at 42%, compared with the national average of 23.4%;

b)              the percentage of patients aged 17 years and over with diabetes mellitus, as recorded on practice disease registers, was also high at 10.1%, compared with 7.1% nationally;

c)              the difference in life expectancy between those living in the most and least deprived areas was 4.4. years for men, and 5.6 years for women.

Many of these behaviours and health outcomes were interlinked and corelated with employment, housing and education outcomes.

Preventative action was required for citizens to know and reduce risks to health.  Citizens should be engaged and take control.  Engagement approaches ranged from: manipulation and therapy where citizens were cured or educated to partnership where power was shared, and delegation where committees were formed with citizen representation.  However, engagement would need resourcing.

In the short term, it was planned to provide a range of commissioned services that focused on prevention and improving the health and wellbeing of residents and embed resident centred initiatives and programmes that focused on people’s strengths and community assets.  There was need to design and implement services to meet the needs of the population including: sports and leisure review; post dementia diagnosis support; integrated intermediate care services review; and integrated frailty model.  Furthermore, there was need to embed and deliver enabling programmes that supported residents to be more resilient including; addressing digital exclusion; urgent care plan portal; and estates development.

In the long term, it was planned to increase life expectancy and reduce the life expectancy inequality gap.  Assistive technology and digital solutions would support residents to be more resilient and lead more independent, healthier lives. This would develop and support a stronger community and voluntary sectors, using local community assets to support residents achieve healthier lives.  Furthermore, this would improve the value of people’s lives, directly impacting on residents’ emotional wellbeing.

RESOLVED:  That the Strategy be noted.