Health Management and Policy Alert

Learning the lessons: the unequal impact of the Covid-19 pandemic: voices of people and communities

National Voices -
This report captures the findings from an engagement exercise held by National Voices about how communities and groups were affected differently by both the Covid-19 virus and the measures to control it. It finds that the pandemic response exacerbated existing, deep-rooted inequalities across the UK, and compounded the disadvantages experienced by people from minoritised communities, by disabled people and by people living with long term conditions.

• Report
• National Voices - news

Access denied?: socioeconomic inequalities in digital health services

Ada Lovelace Institute -
This report seeks to understand how people who have lived experience of poverty and ongoing health concerns are impacted by health inequalities when interacting with patient-facing digital health services. The findings suggest a need for policymakers, health care leaders, and digital health service designers and developers to reconsider how they use data and how they design and deploy digital health services.

• Report
• Ada Lovelace Institute - publications

A community rehabilitation and reablement model

NHS England -
This guidance consists of best practice guidance that systems should consider in connection with their intermediate care and rehabilitation services and implement where appropriate locally and affordable within available budgets. The community rehabilitation model aims to increase capacity and access to high quality therapy-led rehabilitation assessments and interventions that are timely, safe and person-centred, for people discharged on intermediate care pathways from acute settings and virtual wards.

• Guidance
• NHS England - publications

How finance teams are helping to reduce health inequalities

Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) - 

This briefing explores the work that finance teams are doing to help reduce health inequalities. There are three main ways finance staff are supporting this important agenda: allocating resources differently to support specific population needs; aligning data sets, tackling variation and reducing inefficiency; and investing in targeted projects which focus on specific groups. The briefing looks at eight case studies from across the UK, considers lessons learned and explores and how other organisations and systems can draw on good practice. Finance teams can have a significant impact on patient access, outcomes and experience as well as value by supporting and pushing forward the health inequalities agenda.

• Briefing
• More detail

Securing our healthy future: prevention is better than cure

Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC) - 

This paper (supported by the 24 members of the AoMRC) lays out the importance of prioritising child health in political decision making. It outlines ten key actions for UK government to take to prioritise child health. These include creating a Cabinet-level Minister for Children and Young People and preventative measures in childhood to achieve healthy weight, enhance oral health, improve low vaccination uptake, implement clean air policies and support child mental health services. The paper was written by the Royal College of Peadiatrics and Child Health and the Faculty of Public Health to support government engagement on putting children back on the policy agenda.

• Paper
• Press release

The child of the north: addressing education and health inequity

Northern Health Science Alliance -
As well as looking at the funding of schools, this report also highlights that children born into the poorest fifth of families in the UK are almost 13 times more likely to experience poor health and educational outcomes by the age of 17. It concludes that this poses a risk for public services in future years, as the long-term consequences of poor education can not only impact physical and mental health, but can also place great pressure on the NHS, social care, and the criminal justice system in the future. It calls for an overhaul of the current school funding formula, so it takes into consideration attainment inequalities and the health burden borne by schools, to prevent these disparities continuing to increase.

• Report
• Northern Health Science Alliance - news

Suicide prevention in England: 5-year cross-sector strategy

Department of Health and Social Care - 

This strategy sets out the government’s ambitions over the next five years to: reduce suicide rates; improve support for people who have self-harmed; and improve support for people bereaved by suicide. The strategy was informed by the mental health call for evidence launched in 2022, and was developed to identify priority groups, suicide risk factors and steps we need to take. It includes steps and actions from across government and a wide range of organisations to achieve these ambitions.

• Strategy
• More detail
• Press release

The societal and economic costs of preventable cancers in the UK

Frontier Economics - 

The key findings estimate that the total cost of UK preventable cancer cases diagnosed in 2023 is £78 billion, equating to 3.5 per cent of annual GDP. For new cases diagnosed between 2023 to 2040, the total cost is £1.26 trillion. This equates to an annual cost of at least £61 billion in each of these years in real, discounted 2023£. This study was undertaken by Frontier Economics for the Guardian.

• Study
• More detail

Questions of fairness in health and social care policy decisions: a socratic approach

Centre for Health Economics -
The Socratic method is a way of teaching attributed by Plato to Socrates which works through teachers asking questions of their students, to clarify students’ thinking and expose the reasons for thinking as they do. This report takes the form of a checklist of questions for those who make and implement health and social care policies. The questions cover the broad context of health and care, fairness as a concept, public health, implementation and other topics.

• Research paper
• Centre for Health Economics - publications

Maximising the potential of digital in mental health

NHS Confederation -
This report outlines the challenges, benefits and opportunities of digital mental health and explains how it can improve mental health care and population mental health.

• Report
• NHS Confederation - publications