Newham is intensifying its focus on health equity through targeted initiatives, as highlighted in a recent Health and Wellbeing Board meeting. The Newham Health Equity Programme (NHEP) is at the forefront, aiming to address inequalities in health outcomes by working with services and systems to improve equity challenges.
The NHEP prioritises accurate ethnicity data collection, support for the Diverse Communities Health and Wellbeing Forum, and ensuring business cases demonstrate improvements to equity. The programme also provides governance support for North East London (NEL) Joint Planning Group (JPG) funded projects and oversees community grant funding as part of NEL health inequalities funding.
Updates on Newham Integrated Neighbourhood Teams were also discussed. The North-West project, covering Stratford & West Ham and Forest Gate, is exploring a Locality Leadership Team to address health inequalities, focusing on high-intensity users and immunisations. The North-East project, in Green Street and Manor Park, is tackling the high prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes, especially among Bangladeshi and South Asian communities. A workshop co-produced culturally relevant diabetes care solutions, identifying barriers such as language and digital literacy, and cultural dietary habits.
Healthwatch Newham provided a community safeguarding update, following up on their 2022 report, 'Keeping all adults safe – engaging with Newham's communities about safeguarding'. A community engagement event on 14 March 2025 aimed to increase residents' knowledge about safeguarding, build confidence in reporting concerns, and agree on a Decision Support Tool. The event included presentations from residents sharing their experiences.
The objectives for the event were to:
- Increase residents' knowledge about safeguarding.
- Increase the Safeguarding Adults Board's understanding of residents' experiences with safeguarding.
- Build residents' confidence in reporting safeguarding concerns.
- Share case studies and real experiences of residents and community organisations with stakeholders.
- Agree on the creation of a Decision Support Tool to assist both statutory and community organisations in recognizing safeguarding abuse.
- Clarify how the local authority responds to safeguarding concerns that do not meet statutory thresholds as per the Care Act 2014[^2]. [^2]: The Care Act 2014 sets out how local authorities should protect adults at risk of abuse or neglect.
- Establish a framework for community organisations to confidently handle safeguarding concerns.
Food strategy and food security issues were also on the agenda, though further details were not available in the report pack.