Agenda item

Verbal update of the Chair.

The Chair, Councillor Caan, provided an update on Marmot 2.0, advising that Coventry became the first Marmot city in 2013 and during 2020-2022, Covid resulted in many people seeing and experiencing stark inequalities in health for the first time. Adding on the pressure of cost of living and growing poverty, the continuing poor health of the population – with life expectancy declining, and slower economic growth, there was increased interest in how to tackle them.

With a new government who pledged to ‘halving the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions in England’* there were more and more Local Authorities, Towns, Boroughs, Regions, Hospital trusts, ICBs and even countries (Scotland) who were becoming Marmot Places and joining this social movement. Coventry should be very proud in being the start of this.

Coventry was the longest running Marmot city and had started to reflect on the journey. In May, this year a series of reflection workshops for Marmot Partners were held, who shared their thoughts on our journey – past, present and where we were heading in the future. This had been written up and produced as a summary which would be shared in the coming weeks.

Coventry City Council would be renewing its commitment with the ‘Marmot 2.0’ plan. Work was taking place to identify where best as an organisation to focus resources and efforts to strengthen the council’s existing work, to improve health equity for our residents. Some of the priorities required partnership working and work was ongoing regarding improving equity and making things fairer for our residents. 

As Health and Wellbeing partners, there was an opportunity, through the Marmot city work, to come together as a system.  By strengthening all joint work, the inequalities gap could be closed along with improving health and wellbeing and improving quality of life for Coventry residents.

*Labour Manifesto, chapter: Build an NHS fit for the future, Reducing health inequalities section, Build an NHS fit for the future – The Labour Party

Public Health had been working on a high-level business plan to set out the future direction and priorities for the directorate. The main aim of Public Health was to improve public health outcomes and reduce health inequalities in Coventry.  This was undertaken by using the Public Health Grant effectively.  The plan set out how this would be achieved and captured elements of all of the work, focusing on the overlap between workstreams and the focus going forward.  The Chair extended thanks to the Director of Public Health and Wellbeing for her work on the plan.

The Business Plan was an internal document for the Public Health team which could be shared with other directorates of the council, so others could understand the priorities. It did not include the “Business as Usual” and it was meant to be a living document that changed as the direction became clearer and as Public Health priorities were dealt with that arose from national, local and system pressures. 

The plan outlined specific areas of focus for strategic development as well as specific areas for prevention work.  This would be undertaken across the range of services, using data, intelligence and performance to drive our direction, being agile to manage new challenges and our Key Areas of Focus will be:

• Reducing Infant mortality to improve outcomes for our Children and Young people.
• Working with Adolescents to improve their health by influencing the choices that they make. 
• Further developing and ensuring that all council services are underpinned by Prevention strategies, this includes primary prevention, stopping people becoming ill in the first place. 

At this moment, the plan was a working draft, which was being developed in more detail with a finalised plan in place for March 2025.

Finally, the Chair updated the Board on the HDRC Year 2 Celebration event which had taken place on 15th October at the University of Warwick, chaired by Sir Michael Marmot. It covered successes to date and plans for the future including how the HDRC was helping people in the council, voluntary sector and local community to develop research skills and get involved in research into the wider determinants of health. The afternoon included workshop discussions between university researchers and practitioners into new areas of research aligned to One Coventry and Marmot priorities.

RESOLVED that the Health and Wellbeing Board note the Chair’s update.