News from the Healthwatch Wandsworth Assembly – 29 September 2020
Healthwatch Wandsworth usually holds public events to discuss with local people key developments in health and social care.
In September 2020 we held our first online public event. For the third year we talked about Health Inequalities in Wandsworth to follow progress on tackling health inequalities and because the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated lockdown has had an inevitable impact on health inequalities.
For more information about health inequalities in Wandsworth, you can read more here:
- Wandsworth Director of Public Health Annual Report (link: https://www.datawand.info/director-of-public-health-annual-report/)
- Wandsworth Health and Care Plan 2019-2021: (link https://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/media/5565/wandsworth_health_care_plan_welcome.pdf)
At our event we talked about health inequalities in Wandsworth and heard from different health and care service providers about how they have adapted to new ways of working. The aim of our event is to continue to raise awareness of the issues and community conversations about them and to monitor progress on tackling health inequalities.
Key topic covered
- Mike Procter, NHS Director of Transformation for Wandsworth and Merton and Naomi Good, Patient and Public Engagement Manager at NHS Wandsworth CCG presented their work with community groups and others to address health inequalities in Wandsworth.
- We watched a video presentation from Shannon Katiyo, Director of Public Health for Wandsworth and Richmond Council about public health work to tackle health inequalities.
- During the workshops, speakers presented some of the practical issues and solutions they were working on including:
- Digital health and care appointments.
- Healthwatch Wandsworth’s work around community information and communications.
- Community Led Health Clinics to support managing and staying well with a long-term condition.
- Talk Wandsworth talking therapies and their work around mental health.
Next Steps
We have written a report drawing together some themes and experiences people shared with us during discussions on the day. This report can be found here.
We will continue to monitor how health inequalities are being tackled locally and will use feedback gained at this event and in other ways to inform our work.
