Healthy Wales

Topics: public health, Wales, outcome indicators, performance management, partnership, shared outcomes

Yesterday, my IDeA colleague Sue Crutchley, a member of the Healthy Communities team, and I met with Ashley Gould of the Welsh Local Government Association. They have been doing some really interesting work around performance management in health.

Ashley's view is that promoting health is part of the core business of local authorities. Why grit the roads except to reduce accidents? (health) Why inspect restaurants? (health) Why promote better educational attainment? (yep, health - those with greater educational attainment are much more likely to be healthy and live longer) Bringing in new employers for economic development, but there's a problem with high rates of long term disability? (health - and the population will get healthier, too as the employment rates goes up). Promoting health isn't just about beer and fags, he said. (Grave disappointment to me - as these are my most cherished recreation).

The Welsh LGA worked with all 22 Welsh authorities in a whole programme around health - all of it really interesting. But particularly of interest to me is the work they've been doing on developing a set of shared outcome indicators. A set should be available fairly soon and will provide comparable information for all the authorities and PCTs in Wales.

They also have a range of publications and some quality links for healthy communities, too.

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It looks like the Healthy Welsh may be joining us in our forthcoming Community of Practice for health. That will be great because they'll bring a different perspective and their own strands of learning. Stay tuned for more info.

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I learned a new word from Ashley Gould yesterday.

dragonise (drăg’٨nīz) transitive verb
1 To make [par. English] policy and practice more appropriate to the context of Wales
1a To Welsh-up

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