Tackling Health Inequalities

Tackling Health Inequalities using scrutiny

The CfPS Health Inequality Scrutiny programme is a 2-year programme funded by the Improvement and Development Agency’s Healthy Communities Team to raise the profile of overview and scrutiny as a tool to promote community well-being and help councils and their partners in addressing health inequalities within their local community.

It will do this by:

Assessing what health inequality scrutiny reviews have been carried out across the country to date and extract examples of good practice.
Developing a resource kit designed to provide Councils with help, support and advice to encourage them to undertake scrutiny reviews of Health Inequalities.
Identifying and working with four “Scrutiny Development Areas” who will have a key role in making the kit a comprehensive resource for local councils and partners, testing existing models of scrutiny and developing and defining new ones.
Publish and disseminate “How to” guides and the findings from the study about the contribution that overview and scrutiny committees can make.

Click here to find out more about Health Inequalities and how scrutiny can play a role in reducing them.

Centre for Public Scrutiny – Announces successful “Scrutiny Development Areas”

Following a successful promotional and recruitment campaign, 9 areas have been selected to become national CfPS Scrutiny Development Areas. 13 bids were received in total. These ranged in size from single Local Authority bids, to large bids covering a whole region. Each bid was very different in terms of ambitions and area of focus.

Being a Scrutiny Development Area (SDAs) provides these areas with a unique and timely opportunity to help to develop and test a resource kit for scrutiny committees across the Country as well as helping to tackle deep-seated inequalities in their patch. With the Marmot Review into health inequalities due to be published next month, this is an important time for Local Authorities and their involvement in Health Inequalities and the work of the SDAs will provide a platform from which to develop further the Local Authority “health” role.

The initial intention of the programme was to recruit 4 SDAs, however additional funding and match funding from North West Employers Organisations has allowed for 9 areas to join the programme.

The 9 areas are:

Lead Local Authority	Review topic
Chesterfield Borough Council	Health Inequalities in a small deprived area
London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham	Housing and Health
Dorset County Council	Cardio Vascular Disease
Portsmouth City Council	Alcohol related hospital admissions
Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council	Health inequalities in a deprived area
Newcastle City Council	Health inequalities suffered by veterans
Blackpool Council	Minimum pricing of alcohol
Warwickshire County Council	Antenatal and post natal services for teenagers
Cheshire West and Chester	Health Inequalities in small rural pockets

Next steps in the programme

The 9 Areas will be working alongside an expert advisor to conduct their review over the next few months. Each review will assist in the development of the scrutiny resource kit - which will be published early in 2011.

Getting involved

There are still two ways in which you can get involved in this exciting new programme – you can choose one or all of them:

1) Send in examples of your Health Inequality scrutiny reviews

2) Visit the discussion forum – to take part in shaping the latest developments

Programme News

For more information please contact:

Su Turner, Principal Consultant, CfPS

Email: su.turner@cfps.org.uk Mobile: 07795 294052 Website: www.cfps.org.uk