Agenda item

Councillor Jane Palmer, Co-Chairman, welcomed Mr Keith Spencer, the Managing Director at Hillingdon Health and Care Partners (HHCP) and new Co-Chairman of the Health and Wellbeing Board, to the meeting. 

Ms Kelly O’Neill, the Council’s Interim Director of Public Health, advised that, at the Health and Wellbeing Board’s last meeting, members had received an update on two projects in relation to implementing a population health approach to tackling obesity and improving the uptake of health checks.  This report provided the Board with:

1.    an update on the progress towards the Optum falls and frailty project and the whole system approach to obesity;

2.    the progress towards building population health management (PHM) capacity and capability; and

3.    investment of the NHS England (NHSE) health inequalities funding that had been allocated to Hillingdon for 2022/23 and 2023/23. 

£7.022m of additional NHSE funding had been provided to the North West London Integrated Care System (NWL ICS) to tackle inequalities that would be invested initially in the development of business cases to support the progression of the falls prevention project.  Interventions (mostly non-clinical) were being implemented to help reduce falls and increase physical activity and core strength and reduce the number of people who relied on additional care after a fall.  Consideration had been given to increased access to physical activity targeting this older age group population, the recruitment of social prescribers and the introduction of clear qualitative and quantitative measures.  Key lessons learnt in relation to working together had been identified and could be used in the future.

A whole system approach was being used to tackle obesity in the Borough in a PHM place-based way.  A steering group had been set up to lead on this work and, as Hayes had been identified as an outlier neighbourhood area, a community engagement event was being planned.

With reference to the NHS England inequalities funding, Ms O’Neill advised that the focus for non-recurrent funding would be on winter readiness.  For the recurrent funding, the focus would be on progressing the falls and frailty work.  It was suggested that there would be a need to focus on a smaller number of distinct projects and ensure that they were done well.  To help with this, it would be important to identify how Brunel University could assist in formulating new ways of working to gain the best health and wellbeing outcomes for Hillingdon’s residents. 

Mr Tony Zaman, the Council’s Interim Chief Executive, advised that NWL colleagues had spoken about asylum hotels in Hillingdon and Hounslow and how this had put pressure on these local authorities as well as on the other infrastructure in the area.  Although this had been in relation to health, this was also in relation to wellbeing.  He noted that there had been a lot of fantastic working going on but that the support mechanisms that were in place to help people engage with health services were less easily measured / less tangible.  Nonetheless, something still needed to be done to focus on the associated inequalities. 

Ms O’Neill advised that the PHM framework set out how outcomes would be measured.  Different measures had been set out for different projects at the start and resources were being weighted to specific cohorts, with lots of different sources being used to illustrate the impact.  Work was being undertaken to identify the risk and understand the difference to then be able to identify measures that could be put in place.  For example, there were 1,560 people who currently met the falls criteria and different measures would be available. 

RESOLVED:  That the Health and Wellbeing Board:

1.    notes the progress of the Falls and Frailty project and the Whole System Approach to obesity (presented to the Board in September 2022);

2.    is aware of the current training focused on building of capacity and capability across HHCP organisations; and

3.    recognises the opportunities of ongoing investment for current projects and future planned projects that meet the criteria for NHSE health inequalities funding.