It has been a month since we hosted our inspiring and engaging Health Inequalities Conference.
As we begin to set our sights on 2025, we speak to our Reducing Inequalities Lead, Carolin Tomlinson, about her thoughts on the conference, the impact it has had on our Health Inequalities Framework and what this means for the future of CityCare.
What did you think of the Health Inequalities Conference this year?
The second CityCare Health Inequalities Conference was definitely a success and built upon the foundations laid a year ago. The intention of the conference was to officially launch our new ‘Health Inequalities Framework’ and engage our team in the reducing inequalities agenda. I feel confident that we achieved this.
What were your highlights of this year’s conference?
For me I was particularly energised by the number of staff members who wanted to join the day and engage with the health inequalities agenda. It was a highlight seeing teams who are early adopters of the framework share their projects and, whilst doing so, inspire the audience to begin considering what changes they could effect.
Did it leave you with any key take aways?
My key take aways were that CityCare is currently taking positive steps on the journey to improving the inclusivity of our services, and that staff are motivated to identify different ways that they can play an active role in achieving this.
The conference was to help push forward our Health Inequalities Framework. For those who might not know, what is this and what does it mean for CityCare?
The CityCare 2022-25 Strategy referred to a commitment to ‘Make a difference every day to the health and wellbeing of our communities’. Our new ‘Health Inequalities Framework’ sets out the key priorities we are committed to focussing on through the remainder of the 2022-25 Strategy and beyond. We are encouraging our teams to consider identifying projects using their service data and an inclusivity self-assessment tool (The Maturity Matrix), to identify projects which increase patient accessibility to our services and / or increase the quality-of-service provision. This will help ensure that CityCare is actively engaging with service users, those who have been seldom engaged with historically. It will also enable us to fulfil our commitment to collaborate with our patients and our wider communities as we seek to refresh our service offers.
There are already a great deal of projects underway – what key advice would you give to those leading on these projects?
It is great to know that progress has begun, however, to teams at the beginning of their journey, I would suggest that they begin by reviewing their service data and gain a greater understanding about where there appears to be low uptake of services. I would then suggest undertaking the Maturity Matrix self-assessment tool which will help identify areas which need to be worked upon when developing their health inequality project idea. I would then suggest a whole team mind mapping exercise. The key thing is to work together and be creative. The Health Inequalities support team will help guide them through each step.
What next for the Framework? Why is it important and how should it impact CityCare into and past the New Year?
We have created a database of all services and in a phased approach will be connecting with all of our CityCare services. We will focus on those services who had shared that they are currently undertaking a project and support them to adopt the principles of the framework. We will monitor progress and offer support where needed. For those who have yet to identify a project, we will support them to explore their data/ self-assess their current services and support their identification of a project. We will be charting progress of teams on a bespoke intranet page and supporting services undertaking similar projects to connect and share insights.
Ultimately, moving forward, CityCare will be able to evidence the outcome of health inequality projects which demonstrate enhanced social impact for our communities. We hope to showcase CityCare as the community service provider of choice which is committed to making lasting impacts on the health of our citizens of Nottingham City.
As we get better at addressing health inequalities what will patients notice - in the next year, by 2030 and even further into the future?
As we embed our framework and beyond, patients and members of the community will be better informed about Nottingham CityCare and the community services we deliver.
We will have established forums where the Patient voice is welcomed and where they are active partners in reviewing and developing our services.
We will be working in greater collaboration with other health providers across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire as we all strive to collaborate with patients and members of our communities to ensure that we are being responsive to their needs.
Our teams will be fully committed to working in collaboration with patients and community partners and be able to demonstrate how we have incorporated their views into our service delivery models.
We will be able to deliver services which meet the needs of our patients and enable them broader options for engagement; with an ability to evidence the impact.
We will celebrate our successes and share our progress in increasing equity of access to health services across the health landscape of our Nottinghamshire County.
Date published: 18 December 2024
