Agenda item

The outcomes of the Health and Wellbeing Survey, conducted between 26 January and 7 June 2105 by Ipsos MORI, are being presented to the Council on 24 September 2015.  The Director of Public Health will verbally report the headline outcomes of the survey to the meeting and a short briefing paper will be circulated at the meeting for Members’ information.     

Members noted that the outcomes of the Health and Wellbeing Survey, conducted between 26 January and 7 June 2105 by Ipsos MORI, were presented to the Council on 24 September 2015.  The Director of Public Health gave a presentation on the headline outcomes of the survey to the meeting and a copy of the presentation is attached to these minutes.

The Director stated that the survey helped to provide an overview for the City which would help to plan services to encourage a shift in health behaviour in areas such as diet, exercise and smoking etc which in turn would contribute to reducing the gap in life expectancy for people in Leicester compared to the national average.  Some responses to questions could be affected by factors such as a person’s state of mind etc.  For example a person suffering from anxiety may have good physical health but say their health is not good and equally people with medical illnesses may still feel their health is good.  The use of e-cigarettes had risen dramatically in recent years and 9% had now used an e-cigarette.    

The survey was conducted on a face to face basis in people’s own homes.  Some of the questions in the survey related to sensitive issues and there was a provision for anonymous responses. MORI had conducted the survey within four zones in the City but these did not necessarily correspond to ward boundaries.

Overall, 71% stated that their health was good, which compared favourably to 72% in 2010.  White people were more likely to report ill-health than other groups and employment status was an important factor to good health.  98% stated that they were registered with a GP and this was encouraging for a City with a high student population.  64% said they visited a dentist at least once a year which was considered to be a good level of engagement. 

The survey result were being shared with the Police, Fire, Voluntary Sector and health partners and it was intended to make the information more publically available in the near future.  Detailed work would now be ongoing to analyse the information provided in the survey to inform future decision making and priorities.  Work was also underway to use the survey results to provide health profiles for individual wards.

Following questions from Members, the Director commented:-

a)         That further work would be required to make a valid correlation between the information obtained from Air Quality Monitoring and the results of the health and wellbeing survey.  It would require specific work to identify how air quality related to particular diseases or conditions.

b)         The LGBT Centre had data which could be used to produce a profile for the mental and sexual health of the LGBT community. 

c)         It would be possible to make a valid comparison of smoking rates between wards but it would not be possible to make a valid comparison of smoking rates between men and women in each ward due to the smaller numbers involved in the sample base when producing ward profiles.

The Chair suggested that health and wellbeing criteria could be used when considering applications for ward funding.  The Assistant City Mayor – Public Health indicated that if ward councillors provided feedback to this effect it could be considered further.

The Assistant City Mayor – Public Health commented that it could be useful to produce local data for a cluster of wards that covered a specific locality, e.g. the Highfields area of the City.

The Chair commented that it was useful to see the comparison of the latest survey with the results of 2010 and to see what effect policies and priorities had made upon the health and wellbeing of people in Leicester.  It was interesting to note that 3% fewer people ate 5 portions of fresh, frozen, dried fruit and vegetables on average per day compared to 2010 and felt that this may require further work to understand the reason, especially with the increase in the number of food banks available and the prominence of the fresh fruit section on the Leicester Outdoor Market.

The Director stated that it would be useful to have an indication from the Commission of any specific areas of interest they wished to focus upon in the first instance.  In response it was noted that the Commission’s areas of interest arising from the survey would be:-

·         levels of smoking,

·         alcohol consumption

·         wellbeing

·         healthy eating (5 portions per day of fruit and vegetables and food banks)

·         health issues and service provision within the LGBT communities.  

RESOLVED:-

That the Director be thanked for the presentation and that the Commission’s comments be taken into account on further work involving the survey.