Consultation on health and wellbeing in County Durham 2019

Background

As the county's Health and Wellbeing Board, we must work with health services, public health and social care services to improve your health and wellbeing. We must also create a Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy (JHWS) to say how we will do this.

What we know about health in the county

We collect lots of information and data about people's health. This information is compared with the rest of the region and England. It tells us if we have worse or better health than other parts of England so we can begin to see where we need to do extra work. We know that:

• people are healthier if they live in some parts of County Durham rather than in others
• some people are not as healthy as people living in other parts of the country
• lots of things can help to make people healthy or unhealthy such as their environment, a good education, their home, the food they eat, money, family, friends, communities and good jobs

It's important that we include schools, housing providers and local communities when we are working to make people healthier.

Our priorities

Starting well

The experiences that children have early in their life play a key part in their health as adults. In County Durham, it is estimated that one in 10 children have a mental health disorder and that a quarter of adults will experience at least one mental health problem in their life.

We have made progress in recent years in providing opportunities for our children, such as improved development at reception class age, reductions in teenagers giving birth and children smoking. There is still room for improvement, and we also need to offer more support children facing significant disadvantages or challenges.

Living well

We know that a good job, good health promotion, quality housing and active travel have a positive effect on our health and wellbeing. Healthier, active and engaged workers are more productive and have lower levels of sickness.

We know that almost 19% of sickness absence is due to mental health. Local people who have significant health issues need support to overcome them to stay in work. We want to create a community that is a healthy, smoke free place, that offers healthy lifestyles, access to physical activity and good homes.

Ageing well

The length of life of people in County Durham is increasing, but the years of healthy life varies. The gap between the most deprived and least deprived areas within is 8.1 years for men and 6.9 years for women.

Identifying long-term health conditions at an early stage will lead to better outcomes. We need to move to more preventative services and develop community centred solutions. We will also target approaches which help older people remain independent and lead fulfilling lives. 

We will ensure that when the time comes, people receive good quality end of life care.

How we will meet our priorities

Our strategy lists the most important health problems in County Durham for the next five years (2019-25), and most importantly, how we plan to make the county a healthy place to live, where people live well for longer. It will allow the partners on the Board to all make sure they are working to the same goals for physical and mental health and wellbeing, as well as everyone having the same access to good health.

Have your say

Next steps

The final version of the strategy will be taken to the Health and Wellbeing Board on 11 March 2020. It will go to our Cabinet on 13 May 2020.

The one year review of the strategy will be signed off by the Health and Wellbeing Board in March 2021.