A new 10-year health strategy for West and North London has been unveiled, aiming to improve population health outcomes, reduce inequalities, and optimise the use of a £12 billion health and care budget across 13 boroughs. The strategy proposes a significant shift towards prevention, earlier intervention, and neighbourhood-based care, with a strong emphasis on co-production with residents.
Dr. Radhika Balu, GP and Clinical Director for Mental Health at the West and North London Integrated Care Board (ICB), outlined the strategy's three core aims: improving health outcomes and reducing inequalities, reducing pressure on health and care services, and making the best use of available resources. The strategy aims to improve population health outcomes, reduce inequalities, and make better use of the £12 billion health and care budget across 13 boroughs,
Dr. Balu explained. It proposes a shift towards prevention, earlier intervention, neighbourhood-based care, and co-production with residents.
The strategy acknowledges the widening gap in healthy life expectancy, with a 17-year difference between various boroughs and even within individual boroughs. It also highlights the increasing demand for mental health services and crisis care, while a growing proportion of resources are spent on acute care. The strategy aims to address these issues by commissioning differently, and focused relentlessly on inequalities,
with equity as a co-design principle. The goal is to spend where it makes the biggest difference
and to reduce waste and variation
to keep services affordable for the future.
Residents have expressed a desire for simpler, fairer, and more joined-up services, with a focus on prevention and trusted relationships. The strategy aims to address these needs by ensuring information is understandable and culturally appropriate, and that care is delivered in a coordinated manner, avoiding fragmented pathways. Concrete steps to foster co-production include building trust and actually, you know, means actually working with the communities, listening to their voice, making sure that they are part of actually the co-production itself.
The methodology for developing the strategy includes engagement with residents and staff
and asking what matters most to them. How do they want care delivered to them and is there something that we are missing and there's also needs to have some space for some blue sky thinking that we need to do.
Six emerging population priorities have been identified, spanning the life course from early years to end-of-life care. These include giving children the best start in life, supporting young people's mental health, preventing long-term conditions, and improving outcomes for those with serious mental illness and complex health and social care needs. The strategy also emphasizes a whole family approach
and engaging children and young people, especially those who are going through between education, the adult services and also employment.
The strategy will be delivered through integrated neighbourhood models, requiring collaboration between primary care, community services, mental health services, local government, and the voluntary sector. This neighbourhood health
approach aims to prevent patients from being passed on to one to the other, having the wraparound care that she needs.
While specific metrics for tracking progress in reducing inequalities and pressure on services are not detailed, the strategy acknowledges that prevention does not deliver, actually, no results within one or two years. We will not see the impact with regards to reduction in A&E attendance or hospital admissions itself.
The 10-year timeframe is intended to allow commitment to this trajectory, with the goal to reduce avoidable demand
and improve value.
Brent's Health and Wellbeing Board will play a crucial role in translating the strategy into local action by anchoring it in the borough's priorities, identifying areas for shared delivery, and defining local commitments and accountability. The Board has been asked to provide feedback on how the strategy aligns with local needs and priorities in Brent. The full public reports pack for the Health and Wellbeing Board meeting can be found here. The agenda frontsheet is available here.
