Birmingham Health and Wellbeing Board Strategy: Creating a Bolder, Healthier City

We asked for your comments on our proposed Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy, ‘Creating a Bolder, Healthier City 2022-2030’, for the next 8 years.

You Responded

We had 142 responses to the public consultation as well as collecting a wide range of views from local focus groups, webinars, and presentations to ward forums.

People from a wide range of ages (20-79 years) responded to our consultation with the largest amount of responses received from those aged 45 to 59-years old.

51 responses (36%) were from people reporting to have a physical or mental health condition.

98 responses were received from heterosexual or straight respondents, 10* from people identifying as gay or lesbian, and 10 from those identifying as bisexual.

39 respondents identified as Christian, 16 Muslim, and 52 with no religion.

Those responding to the online survey were mainly from a White (British) ethnic background (89 respondents).

We did specifically commission community-based focus groups to discuss the strategy with groups from our minority ethnic and faith communities to help inform the consultation. Additionally, we carried out a Health Impact Assessment with several individuals from a range of communities to analyse the positives and negatives of the strategy. We also attended several ward forums from a range of wards across the city. Finally, we had the strategy reviewed by a group of academics from the National Institute of Health Research to provide their perspective and insight.

*Value suppressed

88% of respondents agreed with our vision statement for the Health and Wellbeing Strategy. The five main themes were also well supported with the proportion of respondents agreeing with each theme as follows; Healthy and Affordable Food (90%); Mental Wellness and Balance (90%); Active at Every Age and Ability (87%); Green and Sustainable Future (87%); Protect and Detect (83%). Similarly, our three themes covering the life course were well supported (87%) as were our over-arching themes (75%).

Within the theme with the most agreement, ‘Healthy and Affordable Food’, the ambitions were all agreed with by large majorities, with reducing dental decay in 5-year-olds (80%) and increasing the percentage of adults eating their ‘5-a-day’ (80%) getting the highest level of support. There was also strong agreement for the ambition around childhood obesity (60%).

There were also very high levels of agreement for the ambitions in the ‘Mental Wellness and Balance’ theme. Reducing the prevalence of depression and anxiety in adults (85%) and reducing the emergency intentional self-harm admission rate (86%) received the most positive support while all the other ambitions had levels of agreement over 70%.  

Support for ambitions in the three life course themes continued to be very high. In the ‘Getting the Best Start in Life’ theme, every ambition received more than 80% agreement. Reducing infant mortality and halving the rate of children killed or injured on the roads both received 87% support.

There were slightly lower levels of agreement for the ambitions in the ‘Working and Learning Well’ theme, although every ambition still had above 70% agreement. The ambition agreed with most was increasing the number of targeted health checks for people with learning disabilities, carers, and severe mental health issues (84%).

Finally, there were very high levels of support for the ambitions in the ‘Ageing Well and Dying Well’ theme, with all having more than 80% agreement. The most supported ambition was to increase the % of eligible citizens offered an NHS Health Check with 89% support. All the ambitions for this theme also received the lowest amount of disagreement with four of the ambitions receiving 0% disagreement.

We have taken on board the views and opinions raised throughout the public consultation for the Birmingham Health and Wellbeing Strategy, ‘Creating a Bolder, Healthier City 2022-2030’.

As a result of the responses received, the Health and Wellbeing Strategy has been refined with the content of each theme as well as the overall structure of the strategy changing to reflect feedback. Some of these changes include:

• Embedding the impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic in every theme across the strategy, rather than its own theme, to reflect that all aspects of health and wellbeing have been affected.
• Adding examples of current or planned projects to actions to demonstrate how we are working towards our ambitions in the short term.
• Removing aspects of crime prevention from the ‘Protect and Detect’ theme and placing them in the life course so that the importance of health protection and crime prevention are not diluted.
• Creating a new ambition in the ‘Active at Every Age and Ability’ theme around increasing the percentage of physically active children and young people.
• Identifying where we can explain the reasoning behind our targets and actions for each theme.

We presented these changes to the officers whose work areas align with the themes, to further refine the strategy. In addition, the feedback from the consultation and the strategy itself will be the starting point for each of the Health and Wellbeing Board Fora to develop their own delivery plans. These plans will detail the specific actions that each forum will take as well as their measures for success in the short term.