A new report from The King’s Fund has outlined how the population is changing, and has identified an opportunity for improvement.
Against the backdrop of stalling life expectancy and wide-ranging health inequalities, this report comes three years after a similar one that the organisation published on the experiences of Directors of Public Health throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, and as a result of the many changes that have been introduced since that period of crisis. These changes include the inception of integrated care systems and significant reform in national-level public health policy.
With those changes now in place, the report allowed the King’s Fund to explore how public health and population have changed and developed since 2021, as well as how public health leaders are working through the period of great change.
Supported by the Health Foundation, the King’s Fund used a number of methods to conduct this research. These included roundtables with specific groups, case studies of varying sizes, interviews with key stakeholders and leaders, and engagement with a number of professional organisations and forums.
Through the report, the King’s Fund were able to collate a detailed image of how public health is developing across the country, with this including the fact that there is no specific blueprint for how health leaders across England are working together. This could be due to the fact that there is a significant difference in the size, complexity, and existing relationships of the different systems. Alongside this, there is also an uncertainty around role definitions, structural arrangements, and future funding – leading to full potential not being reached everywhere.
In order to drive improvement across the public health and population sphere, a number of recommendations were made following the report’s findings. These include more clarity over the definition of equitable population health, medium to long-term commitments on population health, and the meriting of progress over time. For local systems, recommendations would see more time and effort invested in the development of shared, system-wide understandings of population health models, as well as explicit agreements over who will lead at ICS and other public health levels.
Image credit: iStock and The King’s Fund
