Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her department is taking to tackle health inequalities across England.

Through our 10-Year Health Plan, we are committed to tackling the social determinants of health, improving healthy life expectancy for everyone, and halving the gap between the richest and poorest regions. By bringing together departments across the Government, we are ensuring that action on health is embedded in policies that shape people’s daily lives. Recent cross-Government action includes the Warm Homes Plan, the Keep Britain Working Review, and the Homelessness Strategy.

The NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) is responsible for commissioning National Health Services to meet the needs of people in Ashfield. The Nottinghamshire ICB works with local NHS trusts and providers to strengthen prevention, improve population health, and reduce health inequalities, particularly in communities experiencing the poorest outcomes. ICBs have a duty to reduce inequalities between persons both in terms of their ability to access health services and with respect to the outcomes achieved for them.

The NHS’s CORE20PLUS5 approach targets action to reduce health inequalities in the most deprived 20% of the population and improve outcomes for groups that experience the worst access, experience, and outcomes within the NHS. The approach focuses on improving the five clinical areas at most need of accelerated improvement, namely cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory, maternity and mental health outcomes, in the poorest 20 percent of the population, along with other disadvantaged population groups identified at a local level.