Our partners
Working together to improve health and reduce health inequalities
Across North of Tyne we work with community partners, particularly local authorities, to optimise improvement we can make to local people’s health and reduce health inequalities.
We do this by working through a number of local mechanisms and partnerships including local strategic partnerships and making local area agreements on which areas of health improvement we will focus on.
We also collaborate with partners on each local area’s ‘total place’ initiatives which take a cross-sector approach to achieving better outcomes for less resource and responding to the comprehensive area assessments (CAAs), which provide an independent assessment of outcomes achieved by local partnerships. For example, in Newcastle the CAA highlighted the need for greater consistency in health services provided by GPs, such as blood pressure control and cervical cancer screening as areas that need to be tackled.
Local strategic partnerships (LSPs) which bring together public sector bodies, such as the local authority and NHS, with the business sector, and community and voluntary organisations have a significant leadership role in their area to play an active part in joining up otherwise fragmented public services. They produce a sustainable community strategy (SCS) based on data and evidence from the local area and its population, to establish a shared local vision and priorities for action.
A local area agreement (LAA), based on the priorities identified in the area’s sustainable community strategy, is agreed with central government as a delivery plan for the SCS. LSPs review and performance manage progress against the priorities and targets agreed in the LAA and ensure delivery arrangements are in place.
Assessing health needs in Newcastle
A joint strategic needs assessment (JSNA) is how primary care trusts and local authorities describe the future health and wellbeing needs of local populations and how we can direct our services and resources to meet those needs.
A strong, effective partnership has been built in Newcastle between NHS North of Tyne, the city council’s adult and culture services, children’s services, within the JSNA project board led by city council’s executive director of adult and culture services.
The project board has reviewed the significant work completed in Newcastle over the past year to identify the health and wellbeing needs of the population including data, current priorities and what local people have said about health and wellbeing. This information has been made publicly available on an interactive website at www.newcastlejsna.org.uk and is refreshed annually.
How the JSNA is used
The JSNA forms an integral part of the commissioning cycle by providing assessment of current and future need, and identifying gaps in current provision. Local plans are developed in light of the findings and recommendations of the JSNA such as:
- NHS North of Tyne’s strategic plan and annual operating plan
- The Newcastle Partnership’s sustainable community strategy and local area agreement
- The Newcastle City Council’s corporate plan
- Newcastle’s children and young people’s plan
- Planning and commissioning for both children’s and adult health and social care services.
In turn the development of the evidence base in the JSNA should be informed by the gaps in knowledge that are identified by this ongoing review.
Newcastle City Council and Newcastle Primary Care Trust Joint Board
Agenda and papers for the Newcastle City Council and Newcastle PCT joint board are available on the Newcastle City Council website.
