Supporting residents to live longer, healthier lives

Our Cabinet is set to receive this year's annual reports of the Director of Public Health and its Health and Wellbeing Board 2021-22 when it meets next week.

Both reports consider the impact of the pandemic on the health and wellbeing of residents in County Durham, ongoing work to support communities as people learn to live safely with the virus and continued efforts to make smoking history in the county.   

Making sure no-one is left behind

Cllr Chris Hood, Cabinet member for adult and health services, said: "We are determined to do everything to we can to support people in living longer, healthier lives. To do this, it is vital that we work together with our communities and partners to help improve health, reduce inequalities and make sure no-one is left behind.

"Although the pandemic has increased some health inequalities, we can build on the strong response of our partnership work during these challenging times to confidently address these and other issues we may face in the future. Working together to continue to tackle inequalities and offer people more opportunities which will help to improve their health and wellbeing will help to create better outcomes for all."

Responding to the pandemic

During the pandemic we have supplied more than 1.5 million LFD tests through the community testing programme, dealt with over 4,700 reports of Covid in schools, further education and early years settings, and helped to deliver more than one million doses of the Covid vaccine.

Through the work of our County Durham Together community hub, more than 10,000 of the county's most clinically and socially vulnerable people were also offered support with food deliveries, welfare advice and wider support services. More than 400 Covid-19 heroes were also nominated for an award, recognising their contributions to communities during the pandemic.

Inequalities in health and wellbeing 

While the health and wellbeing of residents has improved over recent years, it remains worse than the England average, with higher levels of deprivation and lower life expectancy.

Figures show that there are more people living with long-term mental health problems in County Durham than the England average and more children living in low-income families. However, figures also show the number of people attending bowel cancer screening and getting their flu vaccination is significantly better than the England average.

Over the last year, the County Durham Public Health Strategic Plan has been reviewed and reshaped to focus on three themed areas of work. These include having and promoting a healthier population; improving access to good quality health services while reducing health inequalities; and protecting the health of communities against communicable disease, domestic abuse, tobacco, drugs and alcohol.

Aiming to significantly reduce smoking

This year's report of the Director of Public Health includes an in-depth focus on the progress to significantly reduce smoking in County Durham. Although adult smoking has almost halved across the county since 2005, it remains the single largest cause of preventable deaths and one of the largest causes of health inequalities.

Currently, 14.3 per cent of the population in County Durham smoke and we want to achieve our ambition of having only five per cent of its population smoking by 2030. We also want to reduce the number of mothers smoking at the time of delivery of their babies to zero per cent by 2025, which would reduce the number of mothers who smoke by 700.

The plan to reduce smoking to five per cent by 2030 is focussed around seven key areas of work. This includes motivating and supporting smokers to stop and stay stopped; reducing the demand and supply of illegal tobacco products, increasing prices and addressing the supply of tobacco to children; as well as enforcement around illicit tobacco.

Working together to improve health and wellbeing

Meanwhile, the vision of the Health and Wellbeing Board (HWB), which works with key partners to improve health and wellbeing, also recognises the importance of mental health and wellbeing, physical activity and social factors such as housing, education and employment. Its priorities are starting well, living well and ageing well, as part of its commitment to shaping a healthy place for all residents.  

To support these aims, we commissioned a new collaborative approach to supporting people with mental ill-health in April last year. The new County Durham Mental Wellbeing Alliance brings together a range of mental health providers, enabling them to work together to shape the delivery of support based on local needs.

Starting well, living well and ageing well

The HWB has supported the launch of the County Durham Health and Wellbeing Framework for schools and education settings, to address physical and emotional wellbeing and improve outcomes for children, young people, staff and settings.

Through its Holiday Activities with Healthy Food project, we also engaged with more than 32,000 children and young people, including 2,355 with additional needs.  

The Health and Wellbeing Board also supports the aim of reducing levels of smoking. As well as continued work to raise awareness of the dangers of smoking, the board's chair has written to local MPs to advocate a 'polluter tax' for tobacco manufacturing firms.

The board also endorsed a five-year programme which outlines our plans to deliver 500 affordable homes, including bungalows across the county, with a large proportion dedicated for older people.