Issue - meetings

An overview will be given of key health and care data across Haringey and Islington.

The Board received a presentation which set out the key health challenges faced by Haringey and Islington. The presentation slides were included in the agenda pack at pages 5-20 and the presentation was given by Julie Billet, Director of Public Health Camden and Islington. Some of the key points raised in the presentation were:

·         Life expectancy was a really good indicator of overall health outcomes across the two boroughs. Life expectancy at birth had increased in both Islington and Haringey over the past decade and Haringey was now comparable to London and England for both males and females. Male life expectancy in Islington remained significantly lower than London and England. In both boroughs residents spent on average the last 20 years of their life in poor health. A key challenge going forward was to address the gap in life expectancy between the less affluent and more affluent areas of the population of both boroughs.

·         Resident population was close to 500k across the two boroughs with a projected growth of 8% by 2016. Population growth would be concentrated amongst older age groups, which had particular consequences for health and social care services in the future.

·          Deprivation was a key influence on Health and Wellbeing and overall both boroughs had similar levels of deprivation.

·         Both boroughs had ethnically diverse populations seeing an increase in that diversity between 2001-2011. Both boroughs would see a reduction in the Black Caribbean and Bangladeshi populations, according to population projections.

·         Both boroughs had similar prevalence of health behavioural risk factors, although Islington had significantly more alcohol-related hospital admissions compared to Haringey. Prevalence of smoking in Islington and Haringey was significantly higher than the London average.

·         Both boroughs had a similar prevalence of diagnosed and undiagnosed long term conditions.

·         Islington had the second highest prevalence of serious mental health conditions in London (1.5%) and Haringey had the 10th highest. Both boroughs were significantly above the England and London average.

·         Both boroughs had amongst the highest numbers residents of working age claiming out of work benefits.

·         Both Haringey and Islington had significantly higher proportion of their working age population claiming sickness/disability benefits due to physical and/or mental ill health.

In summary, Director of Public Health Camden and Islington advised that the key challenges were:

• The complexity in provider landscape and patient flows and a lack of neat system boundaries.
• Different organisational cultures and ways of working across the partners
• The need to balance continued focus and work at a local level with work across the Wellbeing Partnership and at a sub-regional level.

The key opportunities were identified as:

·         Similar population health and care needs

·         The shared challenge of improving population health outcomes, care quality and system sustainability in the face of significant financial constraints.

·         Possessing shared ambitions for the residents of the boroughs, along with shared values and a commitment to working in partnership.