In the year ahead we are committed to building on our successes and continuing to work in partnership with people and communities, linking priorities for the health and care system to what matters most to the residents of Lambeth.
Working alongside residents, grassroots organisations and the voluntary and community sector is key to supporting people to maintain and improve their health and sense of wellbeing post Pandemic.
Through our thriving communities programme we will support the extension of our reach into Lambeth communities, to build support for those with and at risk of the poorest health. With increased cost of living pressures, this is especially important for people who face additional financial pressures and for those with physical disability and serious health issues.
Keeping people healthy – investing in communities
Prevention of ill health is the best outcome for Lambeth residents and all parts of the health and care system have a role to play in promoting and maintaining good health. Providing support to stop smoking, reduce alcohol use and eat well are just some of the public health programmes that we want to ensure reach deep into our communities. Our social prescribers, working with their local communities, are key to this, supporting our more vulnerable residents and those with the poorest health.
Improving access to healthcare
A key priority is that everyone, regardless of background, ethnicity, gender and other protected characteristics, should expect to access health and care services tailored to their needs. We will work with diverse communities to better understand the issues they face in accessing health and care services. Using population health data and service usage data to focus our work, we will identify and prioritise areas for improvement that we can work on together with local people, community organisations and health and care partners.
Supporting people with complex health needs
Through our pilot activity this year we have gathered insights that will help us to support the development of new care pathways to ensure residents with complex health needs have support from the health and care services and local community organisations who can make a real difference to their quality of life.
We will focus on chronic pain and supporting people to age well. Based on our lived experience focus groups in 2022, we know that chronic pain affects a disproportionate amount of women of colour and often affects their ability to get and stay in work. This can negatively impact families, so we need to continue to address this inequality. Deteriorating health as we age is a growing challenge for many residents and services alike and in the next year we will align our focus to integrate neighbourhood teams and work with the local authority Age Friendly Lambeth public health initiative too.
Learning as an Alliance
We are uniquely placed to work with residents and communities, learning by doing and collaborating with health and care partners to align efforts to improve health. Through conversations with active citizens and community groups, we are committed to explore and redesign more accessible, impactful and tailored services, such as improving treatment for people with chronic pain. Our challenge remains to work with and listen to all parts of the community, be agile in our implementation and curious in our approach to providing support. We remain committed to seeking feedback and testing our projects against the impact measures that our residents say are important to them.
With technology that enables us to learn from our collective data sources, we can target our projects to those most in need. This will form an important foundation for our work in the next year and beyond. Additionally we will work with our networks to customise projects that work well in other areas and share what we learn with our partner organisations and our communities.