What are health inequalities?

Health inequalities are the gaps in health between various groups. These differences are unfair and avoidable. Health inequality affects things like:

  • whether and how people can access health services
  • how healthy they are likely to be throughout their lives
  • their experiences of receiving healthcare

Why do we need to tackle health inequalities?

Everyone should have equal access to our services. They should have a positive experience with our care. And they should get good results from treatment and support. This is true for everyone, no matter their background or needs.

People with mental illnesses, learning disabilities, autism, and addictions face some of the biggest health inequalities.

  • People with severe mental illness often get more physically unwell than other people.
  • Some ethnic and faith communities find it hard to get support that fits their culture.
  • People with learning disabilities and autism often need changes to be made so that they can access a service and understand their treatment. But these adjustments aren’t always made.

What are we doing about health inequalities?

Tackling health inequalities is a long-term commitment. There are many areas of our work where we need to act. But we can’t do all this at once. To achieve real change for our communities, we need to focus on certain key issues.

The Trust has agreed on six priority areas of work:

  • Delivering the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework. This is an anti-racism approach for NHS mental health trusts.
  • Delivering the Core20Plus5 for children and young people. This aims to improve access to mental health services for young people. It focuses on those from diverse backgrounds living in the most deprived areas.
  • Helping the people we support to improve their physical health.
  • Making sure everyone can access both our in-person and digital services.
  • Our role as an ‘anchor institution’. We can support our community by how we recruit, buy supplies, and use our estates.
  • Continuing our diversity and inclusion efforts. We will make CNTW a great place to work for staff from all backgrounds and with various needs.