Healthier Futures - Our challenges

Our ICS understands the health needs of our population to ensure that we can provide the right services to meet these needs.

Covid-19 has exacerbated some of the health inequalities that exist for some of the people and communites that we serve - addressing the health challenges that we face locally is key.

Our health challenges

• Our communities are very diverse, and many people face complex issues that affect their health and wellbeing:
  • Higher numbers of people with mental health problems
  • Adult and child obesity, combined with low levels of physical activity
  • High infant mortality, combined with high levels of smoking in pregnancy and low breastfeeding rates
  • High numbers of long-term conditions like dementia, respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and relatively high numbers of ‘preventable’ deaths from these conditions
  • Hospital admissions from substance misuse
• Rising numbers of older people, combined with more households living in fuel poverty which can make health conditions worse
• Health inequalities around life expectancy and healthy life expectancy are not improving

Our service quality challenges

• Timely access to services challenged by increasing demands – for example access to GP appointments, mental health services and some cancer services
• Delivering high quality services across seven days
• Providing care and treatment focusing on the whole person, including their physical and mental health needs
• Supporting our current workforce and encouraging more people to work in the NHS locally, as many doctors and nurses are nearing retirement age or are leaving for other reasons
• Providing the highest quality services, in the right place at the right time