Agenda item - Ward Health Profiles and Local Health Priorities

Agenda item

Ward Health Profiles and Local Health Priorities

Alison Challenger, Director of Public Health, and Josephine Guha, Clinical Director, to report

Minutes:

Dr Josephine Guha, Clinical Director, and David Johns, Consultant in Public Health, gave a joint presentation summarising the Ward Health Profiles and Local Health Priorities for the wards, and introducing the Primary Care Network for Nottingham and the locality. The main points were as follows:

 

i.  there have been numerous changes within the NHS in recent years, and it is important to keep up with the health issues that are affecting citizens at a ward level;

 

ii.  the County of Nottinghamshire, excluding Bassetlaw, has been divided into 3 partnership areas - City, South County and Mid Notts. Within the City partnership there are 8 Primary Care Networks (PCNs) and these mostly align with the City Council area boundaries;

 

iii.  Ward Health Profiles are available on-line and aim to start, and inform, discussions with partners regarding the health demographic for each ward;

 

iv.  there is an 8-year gap in life expectancy between the least deprived and the most deprived areas of Nottingham City, with male life expectancy being 77 years, and female life expectancy being 81.1 years. Both of these figures are less than the England average, by 2.6 and 2 years respectively;

 

v.  healthy life expectancy is also below average, with females born in Nottingham having a healthy-life expectancy of 53.3 years, 10 years less than the England average, meaning females born in Nottingham can expect to spend more than a third of life in poorer health;

 

vi.  the impact of environmental factors on health should not be underestimated. Risk conditions such as poverty, unemployment, lack of social support, isolation and poor social networks all contribute to ill health;

 

vii.  the proportion of binge-drinking adults in all of this Committee’s wards is higher than the Nottingham average, with the highest proportion in Nottingham being in the Radford ward (34.5% of all adults);

 

viii.  a lower proportion of children in Radford and Hyson Green & Arboretum have reached a good level of development at the end of the reception year than the Nottingham average – this is a measure of school readiness;

 

ix.  9 out of the 10 GP Practices within the wards record significantly higher prevalence of severe mental health illness than the England average;

 

x.  Ward Health Profiles are designed to give a snapshot of the demographic of the wards and to give an overview of health priorities.

 

In response to questions and comments from the Committee, the following information was given.

 

xi.  PCNs in this area are not currently as well staffed as other areas, but that is being addressed and staffing levels are steadily increasing;

 

xii.  a range of measures, both locally and across the city as a whole are being introduced to address health issues, but it is still reliant on the public to help in ways such as stopping smoking, stopping binge drinking, eating more healthily and taking exercise on a more regular basis;

 

xiii.  in an ideal world, incidents of poor mental or physical health would be at zero, but being realistic, PCNs and health professionals can only try to get the numbers as low as possible;

 

xiv.  a directory of available services is available on the internet at ‘Ask Lion’, signposting residents to childcare, local activities and physical and mental health information -www.asklion.co.uk/kb5/nottingham/directory/home.page.

 

The Committee thanked Josephine and David for their attendance and noted their informative presentations.

Supporting documents: