Working together in BSW to tackle health inequalities

As part of its ongoing work to address inequalities the BSW Partnership is developing a new strategy to make sure that tackling inequalities is everybody’s business and that there is a long-term commitment to addressing these issues across BSW.

Inequalities are unfair and avoidable differences that can impact on health across different communities driven by factors such as education, housing, employment, ethnicity and access to health services and programmes.

Steve Maddern, Director of Public Health at Swindon Borough Council has been appointed as Senior Responsible Officer for Inequalities and is being supported by Health Inequalities Project Manager Hannah Savigar-Jones.

Working with other partners across BSW, the team are developing a plan to make sure that tackling health inequalities becomes “everyone’s business” and is embedded in all the work of the health and care organisations that make up the BSW Partnership.

Steve Maddern said his appointment and the development of a strategy for BSW was an important step forward in terms of addressing the problems caused by health inequalities in BSW.

“The Covid pandemic has widened existing inequalities and created new ones – the past two years has also taught us new ways of working with our communities to tackle inequalities more effectively, which we must now build upon.

This is a challenge in BSW and addressing it is one of the Partnership’s key priorities. This strategy will look to define what we are talking about in terms of health inequalities, highlight the extent of the problems and look for ways to address them on an ongoing basis.”

The BSW Health Inequalities strategy will be finalised this summer and discussed at a future meeting in public of the BSW Partnership Board. You can check for dates of future meetings here https://bswpartnership.nhs.uk/news-events/