Purpose
Deprived communities suffer a greater burden of ill-health than less deprived communities. Evidence shows that people living in deprived areas are more likely to smoke, have a poor diet, be physically inactive and die early from cancer or heart disease.
Over half of these cancer deaths and many cardiovascular deaths and other long-term conditions are considered preventable - with smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, poor diet, and excess alcohol consumption being key underlying preventable factors
The BBP is supporting initiatives to prevent poor health outcomes by connecting Primary Care with the borough’s lifestyle, health improvement services.
Objectives
Public Health commissions a range of services that support residents to proactively adopt healthier lifestyles. Alongside services, Public Health works with partners to implement strategies to influence a healthier environment. Public Health has consolidated a range of projects into six thematic areas to produce a strategy that ensures locality-based action, concentrates resources, builds community led change and provides a landscape for evaluation. Three of these are part of the BBP’s transformation list for 2023/24 and are set out below.
Deliverables
Healthy Hounslow this is a resident facing wellbeing service to enable communities to achieve their best health and reduce the widening gap of health inequalities, it will:
- Address and prevent key health and behavioural related risk factors i.e. smoking, obesity, and inactivity. Using evidence-based, co-produced and needs-led approaches to ensure good accessibility to instructor led services and customer first experience, against a suite of robust performance indicators.
- Through an Alliance model, partners will deploy a suite of universal interventions, digital tools, and signposting to enable and empower residents to improve their own health and wellbeing through self-care.
The CVD outreach bus out and about in Hounslow, delivering NHS Health Checks and blood pressure monitoring
The places where all residents work and live affects their health - The food options available, the spaces children play in or the way people travel all matter. They all affect the risk of unhealthy weight. We know that some localities make healthier lifestyles more difficult. This strategy will address this systemic issue by:
- Identifying key teams, institutions, and community groups to reference and boost health improving themes already within their scope or projects.
- Building partnerships in Feltham to devise a community development led approach to healthy weight. Together revising options available in homes and schools, and on the high streets to become healthier.
- Join with multiple partners and anchor institutions to see how to make healthier options, easier options by looking at the assets already there, what works well, and residents recommend.
The below video highlights factors which drive unhealthy weight:
We all want to beat cancer and part of that fight is talking about it and detecting it early through screening. Public Health’s role to play in healthcare partnership is to provide local communications through media and the workforce, we will:
- Build on our successful work alongside local business to help their staff and customers be aware of what to know about signs of cancer and the value of screening for early detection.
- Map of local businesses who have pledged to support the project and promote case studies of what worked well when sharing the message. Helping local businesses be a voice in the community for wellbeing.
- Our Health Outreach Team and wider workforce will continue to have conversations to break down any misconceptions and target communities with a low screening uptake, guiding anyone who has missed a screening opportunity to arrange a new one.
The programme aims to prevent cardiovascular disease, and associated conditions, through the early assessment, awareness, and management of individual behavioural and physiological risk factors.
Hounslow continues to achieve its target number of NHS Health Checks, early identification of risk is essential for a healthier population, we will:
- Complete a review of practice level service data for completeness and offer support and training.
- Maximise the impact of attending a Health Check, by ensuring we maximise referrals into Healthy Hounslow after a Health Check delivered by Primary Care.
- Develop a plan for service improvement to achieve a growth in completeness, numbers & quality.
