Agenda item

To consider a report by the Director of Public Health.

The Board acknowledged that prevention was integral to Public Health Dorset’s Integrated Care System Plans and all that it was trying to achieve, as well as being critical in both local authority’s corporate strategy in how these were applied and how their priorities would be delivered.

Members were provided with a Public Health Dorset perspective on progress in transforming the Dorset System approach to prevention over the previous 5

years, which set out a high level strategy for the Service and how it could

support what was to be done going forward. Our Dorset - the Dorset Sustainability and Transformation Plan – had been published in 2015 and included Prevention at Scale as a key programme to help reduce demand within the system as well as improving population health and wellbeing: by encouraging healthier lifestyle options before there was a need for more evasive NHS interventions. Although there was ongoing prevention work across the system, this was not able to always be readily coordinated or any degree of consistency, with there being a need for all that was necessary to be readily available and accessible.

The two Authority’s respective Health and Wellbeing Boards had given consideration to what was necessary to have a more co-ordinated, sustainable and effective prevention approach across the system, resulting in a portfolio of work, organised into four programmes:

·       Starting Well,

·       Living Well,

·       Ageing Well and

·       Healthy Places.

The contribution Public Health Dorset made to this was in being responsible for delivery of key preventative projects, integral to the Business Plan, with them providing a supportive or facilitative role in assisting with the delivery of those services by other partners within the system. Whilst good progress had been made, there had been challenges due to interdependencies with other portfolios of work, shifting timelines and priorities across the system and the inevitably finite resource within the system to deliver change. How this was being applied since the inception of the two new authorities was acknowledged with there being a critical need to embed prevention within the two new councils’ ways of working and all that it did. So as to have a strategy that was able to meet the need of the two Unitary Authorities, a rationalisation of the ICS Plan was necessary so that it remained purposeful.

As both Councils were now firmly established, with corporate strategies developed and the ICS plan updated, it was seen to be opportune to take stock and refresh the approach taken to prevention, with Public Health Dorset identifying three main areas of focus going forward:

• Local authority transformation

• Improvements and transformation within the Public Health Dorset

and LiveWell Dorset services

• Support to the Integrated Care System and prevention embedded

within the NHS.

Members considered the appendix to the report to be very helpful in their better understanding of what Prevention at Scale entailed in seeing how this was being delivered, the way it was being delivered and why it was being done. With the aim of establishing stronger and healthier communities, members asked that consideration be given to ensuing that health was integral to housing and planning policy considerations. It was acknowledged that the LiveWell initiative was instrumental in what could be achieved and renewed publicity would be given to its benefits. The Board were pleased to see the satisfactory progress being made in how Prevention at Scale was being delivered, and how community based access to this contributed towards this.

Resolved

1) That progress made of the Prevention at Scale initiative to date and that a stocktake of progress made in accordance with the Public Health England suite of interventions and what it had achieved be noted and endorsed.

2) That discussion at the ICS System Leadership Team be supported, so as to clarify how outstanding initiatives identified the stocktake might

be addressed under Our Dorset, Looking Forwards – the refreshed plan

for the system.

3) That a high level strategy be approved for Public Health Dorset that focused on the three broad areas of:

• Local authority transformation

• Internal improvements and transformation within the Public Health

Dorset and LiveWell Dorset service

• Support to the Integrated Care System and ensuring prevention

continues to be embedded within the NHS

Reason for decision

To ensure the benefits of the Prevention at Scale initiative were realised and maintained so that it achieved what it was designed to do.