Agenda and draft minutes

Councillor Flora Willamson was elected as the Chair for this meeting.

The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting and made introductions.

Apologies for absence were received from John Everson.

There were no declarations of pecuniary or other interests made at the meeting.

The discussion items were considered in the following order:

B3: Evidence Islington (EI) Update

B2: NCL Delivery Plan and NCL Population Health and Care Strategy

B1: Health and Wellbeing Board Strategy

RESOLVED:

That the minutes of the meeting held on the 9th of July 2024 be confirmed as an accurate record of the meeting and signed by the Chair.

Charlotte Ashton, Programme Director, Evidence Islington, provided an update on the progress that Islington Health Determinants Research Collaboration (known locally as Evidence Islington) had made over the first full year of mobilisation and operation and the plans for Year 2 of the programme.

The following main points were discussed at the meeting:

• Evidence Islington consisted of three key workstreams which included strengthening, collaborating and culture to help enable local authorities to become more research-active, using evidence to inform decision making by undertaking research and evaluation relating to their activities.
• Evidence Islington had made good progress during the first full year and had a full team recruited into post. It was noted that that embedded researchers were co-located within the environment and housing directorates in the Council.
• It was noted that activities were carried out to support research and cross-council capability including the development of an evaluation toolkit.
• The Strategic Delivery Board provided representation from across the Council with three residents who were members of the board.
• Evidence Islington resident network had formed small project groups to support activities that looked at the Council decision-making processes with Democratic Services staff to prepare accessible materials on how the Council made decisions and how residents could get involved.
• In terms of collaboration, there had been engaged within Islington, regionally and nationally to forge new relationships. It was noted that several meetings to explore opportunities with other academics had taken place over the last 12 months.
• In terms of funding, it was advised that the funding was for a five-year programme and would be proactively seeking opportunities to bid for additional grants.
• In terms of priorities for the next 12 months, it was advised that there was an importance in completing the baseline evaluation and dissemination of findings, as well as the launch of the new Data Hub, completing the training and development assessment and working across departments and with academic partners.
• In response to a question regarding health literacy, it was advised that health inequalities were a good example to learn through the evaluation methodologies and understand how the team work together across the system in terms of structure being implemented. There were drop-in workshops in place where people could bring evaluation for support and discussion around best practices. There was importance given to ensuring that Evidence Islington was sustainable as funding was not guaranteed after 5 years.
• In response to a question regarding research on the impact of breastfeeding, It was noted that Evidence Islington programme focused on wider determinants. However, breast feeding could be linked in as some of the factors in supporting mothers to continue breastfeeding were linked into these wider determinants. It was noted that this would be taken into consideration and fed back to the Children’s team to look at how this can be linked and ensure that the right people were involved in these conversations. Officers also added that there was peer support available around breastfeeding in Islington with one of the highest initiation rates. Officers also  ...  view the full minutes text for item 42.

Clare Henderson, Director of Place, East at NHS North Central London ICB, Sarah D'Souza, Director of Strategy Communities and Inequalities NCL ICB and Rhian Warner, Assistant Director of Place for North Central London ICB introduced the report that outlined the ambition to tackle health inequalities by a shared emphasis on early intervention, prevention and proactive care.

The following main points were discussed at the meeting:

·       NCL Population Health & Integrated Care Strategy was endorsed by system partners in April 2023.

·       The Delivery Plan summarised plans to tackle inequalities among key communities, who had been identified as facing the poorest outcomes.

·       In terms of next steps, it was noted that this was a wide-ranging strategy and a lot of work had been done associated with population health.

·       It was noted that there was a focus to identify a smaller sub-set of key sentinel population heath metrics to demonstrate the impact with which to effectively track and showcase the progress made.

·       On a local perspective, it was stated that there was a struggle in the uptake of childhood immunisations. However, in terms of vaccination coverage, collaboration across the system and innovation over the past two years had seen an increase in the uptake of the childhood schedule.

·       In terms of physical health checks for people with severe mental illness, it was noted that there had been an improvements in the uptake and the development of the Islington collaborative partner plan to deliver the Longer lives programme was underway.

·       In terms of key communities progress in Children and Young People service, it was noted that over £1m was invested in Children’s Therapies backlog so that 5,591 initial assessments provided in Speech and Language Therapy and Occupational Therapy, reducing the number waiting for initial assessment. It was advised that a breakdown of the costs would be helpful to understand how the therapies were being delivered. In response it was mentioned that it was difficult to present a high-level illustration of this at a granular level and was noted that next time the report would be more borough focused.

·       In response to a question regarding mental health issues around the use of digital products, it was advised that this had been a concern for a lot of clinicians and more detailed work would be carried out to look into this further.

·       In response to a question regarding housing and stability, Officers advised that within the wider determinants, housing was a core factor. There had been collaborative work done with colleagues from Housing, Children’s Services and Adult Social Care around bringing the matter of housing and health to the Integrated Care Board meeting.

·       It was also added that work had been done to tackle damp, mould and overcrowding. Officers also advised that the Longer Lives Initiative helped to address serious inequalities and mental illness.

·       In terms of the delivery plan, it was stated that the delivery plan was iterated ever year and refinements would be made to ensure that it aligned with Islington’s local plan. It was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 43.

Johnathan O’Sullivan, Director of Public Health, introduced the report that provided an update on the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy for Islington, intended to cover the period up to 2030.

The following main points were discussed at the meeting:

• The strategy highlighted the vision to improve the health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities of the local population, its communities and residents.
• The new Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy sets out overarching goals for each phase of the life course, supported by a number of outcomes. The overarching goals for each phase were Start Well, Live Well, Age Well and Healthy Environments. For each phase, a number of key areas or outcomes of importance had been identified with a small number of accompanying metrics which were intended to provide the Health and Wellbeing Board with a way to track population health progress. The key strategic priority areas for focus for each phase was outlined on pages 12-13 in the agenda pack.
• In response to a question, it was noted that the service would look at how they could bring Housing out more strongly in the priorities plan.
• It was noted that the healthy life expectancy had improved in the borough over the last 10 years. In response to a question regarding how information and key messages are conveyed to residents through communication, it was advised that this would be done through the consultation engagement process. There were also good links across the community voluntary sector.
• In terms of the NHS 10-year health plan for England, it was noted that the consultation was taking place and there had been more than 40,000 individual responses already. Some of the key focus points noted was around how to shape and plan the future of the NHS, looking at how more care could be provided in the community, how more digital technologies could be used and focusing more on prevention and preventative activities.

RESOLVED:

That the report to be noted and recommendations to be agreed.