Agenda item

5.1

The Board considered a report of the Director of Public Health, Sheffield City Council, which commented on and appended the draft refreshed Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy to cover the period 2019-23.  The report also asked the Board to advise on the future development of the Strategy ahead of its planned agreement at the Board’s March 2019 public meeting, and posed the following questions:-

·         Are the Board content with the specific wording of each ambition statement?

·         Are the Board content with the development of the substance underpinning the ambitions?

·         Do the Board feel the Strategy properly addresses mental health and wellbeing, and healthy communities, and other issues that cut across the life course?

·         Are the Board content with the proposed approach to implementation and measurement?

5.2

Greg Fell (Director of Public Health) introduced the report, referring in particular to the proposed structure of the new Strategy which was to set out, as nine ambitions for the city, the critical foundations that must be laid for achieving the previously agreed vision to close the gap in healthy life expectancy in Sheffield by improving the health and wellbeing of the poorest and most vulnerable the fastest.  These ambitions were articulated in the Strategy and structured into the three Life Course stages of Starting and Developing Well, Living and Working Well, and Ageing and Dying Well.

5.3

He commented that it was not intended that the Strategy would detail all of the work being undertaken to improve public health in the city, tobacco control being one such example.  He added that the issue of loneliness was proving difficult to articulate and incorporate into the Strategy, and suggested that the content in relation to mental health and wellbeing, and healthy communities, required further strengthening.  He also highlighted the proposed approach to delivery of the Strategy including developing the Board’s future work programme around the Strategy.

5.4

Comments from members of the Board included:-

·         Acknowledge that everyone in the city having a fulfilling occupation would not necessarily apply to people within the older age groups.

·         Review how the ambitions are presented in page 7 of the Strategy to remove the impression of an order of priority.

·         Targets/timescales be built into the subsequent metrics and action plans to be developed in relation to the ambitions.

·         Acknowledge relationships to other plans and strategies for the city, for example, Shaping Sheffield.

5.5

RESOLVED: That:-

(a)        the wording of the proposed ambitions, and the proposed approach to implementation of the Strategy and measurement of success, be approved;

(b)        the Board commits to further engagement and development of the Strategy, for agreement at the Board’s March 2019 public meeting; and

(c)        the Director of Public Health be requested to undertake further work in relation to the content on loneliness, mental health and healthy communities, and members of the Board be requested to forward to the Director any comments or suggestions they may have in relation to the content of the Strategy.