Health impact assessment
A conference took place with the specific
purpose of raising awareness and promoting ownership amongst
agencies of the health inequalities in the South Whitehaven and
South Workington areas through the findings in the Health Impact
Assessment; to help address the issues and put in place some of the
report’s recommendations:
- To improve housing and provide more green spaces
- To promote healthy lifestyles
- To tackle long-term unemployment
- To improve access and transport to primary care services, in
particular dental.
- To improve communication between GPs and Job Centre Plus, for
example, Employment Advisors working in partnership with primary
care services.
- To develop support for teenagers, including employment
opportunities.
The Health Impact Assessment Report and Health Impact Assessment
Executive Summary are available to download below.
The conference took place on Wednesday 16 April at the Oval
Centre, Salterbeck, Workington and the keynote speaker was
Director of Public Health and County Medical Officer, Professor
John Ashton. As well as other presentations there was the
opportunity for people from all agencies involved to work together
to put in place joint positive actions to address the
recommendations and to progress the key areas identified in the
Health Impact Assessment. These will then be evidenced within the
Neighbourhood Management Delivery Plans.
An external communications consultant from the Improvement and
Development Agency for local government attended to write up the
event.
The leader of Allerdale Borough Council, Joe Milburn, has backed
the conference. “The people who live in these areas deserve the
best access to health that can be provided and I hope this
conference will go some way to provide that.”
Councillor Barbara Cannon is the chair of the Neighbourhood
Management Partnership Board, and has long been involved in
tackling health inequalities in the county. She said: “This level
of poor health is unacceptable in a modern society. The solutions
are not easy, but find them we must. Durham University’s report has
suggested what can be done and starting with this conference, we
must strive to do so.”
Allerdale Borough Council
