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Working together to improve health and reduce health inequalities

Across North of Tyne we work with community partners, particularly local authorities, to optimise improvement we can make to local people’s health and reduce health inequalities.

We do this by working through a number of local mechanisms and partnerships including local strategic partnerships and making local area agreements on which areas of health improvement we will focus on. We also collaborate with partners on each local area’s ‘total place’ initiatives which take a cross-sector approach to achieving better outcomes for less resource and responding to the comprehensive area assessments (CAAs), which provide an independent assessment of outcomes achieved by local partnerships. For example, in North Tyneside the CAA highlighted the need for greater progress in reducing teenage pregnancies, the number of women smoking in pregnancy and hospital admissions for alcohol-related harm as issues that need to be addressed.

Local strategic partnerships (LSPs), which bring together public sector bodies, such as the local authority and NHS, with the business sector, and community and voluntary organisations have a significant leadership role in their area to play an active part in joining up otherwise fragmented public services. They produce a sustainable community strategy (SCS) based on data and evidence from the local area and its population, to establish a shared local vision and priorities for action.

A local area agreement (LAA), based on the priorities identified in the area’s sustainable community strategy, is agreed with central government as a delivery plan for the SCS. LSPs review and performance manage progress against the priorities and targets agreed in the LAA and ensure delivery arrangements are in place.

Assessing health needs in North Tyneside

A joint strategic needs assessment (JSNA) is how primary care trusts and local authorities describe the future health and wellbeing needs of local populations and how we can direct our services and resources to meet those needs.

The JSNA pulls together a wide range of information about the current and future health and well-being needs of the local population.

It provides an opportunity to look forward so that we can plan now to ensure that we are able to meet the needs of local communities in the future.

The JSNA is one of the  major influences in directing our commissioning priorities and planning service developments and it describes the future health, social care and wellbeing needs of the population so that NHS North of Tyne and North Tyneside Council can take co-ordinated action to make improvements.

How the JSNA is used 

The JSNA forms an integral part of the commissioning cycle by providing assessment of current and future need, and identifying gaps in current provision. Local plans are developed in light of the findings and recommendations of the JSNA such as:

• NHS North of Tyne’s strategic plan and annual operating plan
• Underpin future revisions of the sustainable community strategy
• Local area agreement 
• Council plan
• Planning and commissioning for both children's and adult health and social care services

Involvement from people who use health and social care services as well as those providing services from the council, NHS and community and voluntary sector are essential for the ongoing success of the JSNA in North Tyneside, as is the use of social marketing to understand better what further steps we need to encourage people to live healthier lifestyles.

Information from the JSNA is already being used to direct the commissioning and planning of health and social care services in the borough.