Agenda item

Matthew Fung led the Board through a presentation on a refresh of the Joint Health and Well-being Strategy (JHWS). A JHWS was unique to each area and set out a vision and priorities as to what was needed to ensure that the needs identified in the JSNA were met. The current strategy had delivered against 3 key priorities for which detailed action plans were produced. Following an update earlier in the year, the Board received details of progress made against the action plans including a summary of the many key objectives which had been successfully achieved. As well as the progress against the Action Plans, other areas of progress had included social prescribing initiatives and the Make every contact count (MECC) programme.

The evaluation process had also identified areas which required continued focus. With respect to the key priority ‘Good Mental Health and Well-being throughout life’, two measures were highlighted which were currently significantly worse in Worcestershire than the average across the country, those being School readiness and Dementia diagnosis rate of the over 65’s.

The Board was mindful that the JHWS would expire in March 2021 and therefore the process towards the development of a new strategy needed to be commenced. The characteristics of a good JHWS were set out, including the importance of active engagement and involvement of local communities and the opportunity to link with other Strategies or Plans in different organisations. It would be crucial to find ways to engage those who suffered from health inequalities in this development process. It was also highlighted that the Here to Help scheme would provide a useful means of communicating directly with residents.

The next steps would involve scoping out the task, setting up a working group and determining appropriate means of stakeholder engagement.

A number of issues and observations were raised:

·         On health checks, the figure of 49.8% of eligible Worcestershire patients having received an NHS health check  between 2014-19 was still too low. It was reported that there were still many unknowns as to why take up wasn’t higher and the situation had been exacerbated recently with the COVID-19 situation. Work was being carried out through the JSNA to try and establish why people didn’t participate in such initiatives. A pilot scheme was being considered for Bromsgrove to contact with the 1% of over 65’s who currently had no interaction with health or social care.

·         It was vital that there was confidence in the flu jab service this year with the ongoing risk of COVID-19 and people should be strongly encouraged to take up their invite for a flu jab.

·         Healthwatch drew attention to the challenge set out in the evaluation of the action plans which referred to ‘larger scale systematic approaches being required to really make an impact on reducing risk of disease and inequalities’ and stressed the importance of continuing to move forward.

·         The achievements of the JHWS and the detailed work that had been accomplished towards making an impact on the indices of multiple deprivation should be celebrated.  The progress achieved through collaborative working in the past few months should also be commended and there was so much opportunity to extend this in the future.

RESOLVED that the Health and Well-being Board:

1.    Noted the progress made against the Worcestershire Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy (JHWS) 2016-2021 and agreed to commence and support the development of a new strategy drawing on local need, evidence and consultation.

2.    Approved and supported the formation of a working group, including representatives from Public Health, H&W Clinical Commissioning Group, Healthwatch and Districts.

3.    Noted the need to adopt appropriate methods of stakeholder engagement to shape the new strategy.

4.    Agreed to receive an update on progress made to develop a new Strategy later in the year.