Agenda item

1)    Mr George gave a presentation which supplemented his report to the Board that addressed the latest changes made to the Kent Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) development process, priorities, needs assessments and population profiles over the past two years. The contents of his presentation included: Kent’s demographic changes, which saw a 7.7% population increase between 2011-21; locality health profiles and indicators; improvements in the coverage of health checks; higher disease burden and deprivation levels in coastal areas; increasing 5-11 years demand for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs); Kent’s adult obesity rate of 63.2%; increased demand for mental health services; improvements to community engagement through Kent and Medway Listens; and the update of JSNA infographics, health and social care maps, cohort models, stakeholder insight, population segmentation analysis, linked dataset development, research, innovation and Improvement. Following his presentation, Mr George emphasised the importance of making the JSNA forward looking. He reassured the Board that prevention and output impact modelling would continue, taking advantage of new census data, and that KCC Public Health worked alongside NHS partners on linked data sets.

2)    Mr George clarified following a question from Mrs Chandler, that whilst smoking remained the main source of preventable mortality, primarily through smoking related cardiovascular and respiratory conditions, obesity was projected to emerge as the primary cause of preventable mortality in the near future.

3)    Concerning population segmenting, as addressed in Mr George’s presentation, Mrs Chandler asked whether there were any risks to compartmentalising population age groups which could negatively impact a child’s health journey. Mr George reassured the Board that the JSNA considered children’s needs across all age ranges and that it was largely NHS data which was used for segmentation. He recognised the need to present data in better ways, which required nuanced data analysis.

4)    Cllr Harrison commended the report and shared her concern at the prevalence of obesity in the county, noting that the significant cost and strain it placed on public services demanded a focused response. She added that an individual’s journey to obesity should be further investigated, with at risk groups targeted with hard hitting public health advice. Mr George agreed that obesity was one of the main sources of ill health and required a concerted effort from partners to reduced both the prevalence and impact of it on services. He informed Board Members that glucose meters had been commissioned in Kent and Medway for some patients and noted that diabetes was not a homogenous group. He stressed the importance of tackling individual diabetes groups at scale and pace, with recent modelling suggesting that a targeted approach was most effective. 

5)    Concerning the recommendation to further improve data sharing, Mrs Chandler welcomed further investigation by partners on how the recommendation could be widely adopted and realised, noting the benefits better data sharing would have on services and assessments.

6)    Mrs Cook explained, following the Board’s comments, that whilst the Health and Wellbeing Board did not have the authority to mandate the Integrated Care Partnership, it was entitled to recommend and advise the Partnership on matters concerning health and wellbeing in Kent.

RESOLVED to recommend that:

1)    the new NHS Integrated Care Board and Health Care Partnerships need to adopt a broader consistent structure for outlining priorities for population health improvement, encompassing primary prevention, secondary prevention for those at risk of Long Term Conditions;

2)    as part of the Whole System Approach to Healthy Weight programme, a long-term obesity plan needs to be developed and aligned with the Kent Public Health and Integrated Care Board strategies, optimising existing pathways with better referral criteria, emphasising more on population level focus, and ensuring impact on wider determinants of health;

3)    greater emphasis from the Integrated Care Board and KCC is required on smoking prevention as well as cessation, integrating directly into local care and acute care models. Better emphasis on workforce planning to enhance Making Every Contact Count particularly on frontline services that have yet to implement as such, and increase referrals into existing One You and other relevant social prescribing services; and

4)    local senior leadership to go further and faster in better data sharing with the NHS and instruct their data infrastructure teams to work with their respective NHS counterparts in moving towards a common solution for data sharing and linkage, linking into the NHS led Population Health Management programme.