Our Health Priorities
Our Health Priorities
We have chosen to measure our success through ten health “outcomes”, directly related to the well being of local people.
We have set ourselves testing targets. If we achieve them by 2014, we will save 430,000 years of life in the Nottinghamshire communities we serve.
Our first two overall priorities are:
- To improve life expectancy – adding more than a year to each person’s life
- To reduce health inequalities – closing the life expectancy gap between richer and poorer areas.
Nottinghamshire is a diverse county. Generally, health is better than the national average. But our research shows that there are massive local variations in life expectancy and rates of illness:
- On average, a man living in the Ravensdale ward of Mansfield will live 14 years less than a man in the Trent ward in Rushcliffe.
- The proportion of people who smoke is twice as high in Ashfield as in Rushcliffe.
- A teenage girl in Ashfield is twice as likely to get pregnant as one in Rushcliffe.
Our eight other health outcomes relate to specific areas of health, you can find out more by clicking the links below.
There are three other areas where we are prioritising, because local people have told us they are important:
- Better access to primary care. GPs, dentists and pharmacists are the gateway to good health and can ease the burden on other parts of the NHS. We will extend GP opening hours and increase the number of people receiving NHS dental care.
- Dementia services. More than 10,000 people in Nottinghamshire have dementia, and this will double in 30 years. There will be new services for those with early dementia, support for GPs in diagnosing patients, and specialist outreach teams into care homes.
- Mental health services. More than 85,000 people in Nottinghamshire have depression or anxiety. From not having a service, we will increase the number receiving psychological therapies to more than 16,000 a year.
