Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce women’s health inequalities in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England.

In the Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board area, local maternity and neonatal systems have developed an equity and equality strategy and an action plan will be submitted to NHS England by the end of September 2022. This will support services for smoking cessation, gestational diabetes, women with complex social needs and additional training for staff. Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care System is reviewing inequalities in its screening programmes to improve access. It is also promoting the use of the Health Equity Assessment Tool to identify and address inequalities in women’s health services. University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust and Coventry City Council are collaborating on targeted programmes for women living in deprived areas who have gestational diabetes or are obese.

In Birmingham and Solihull, a health inequality five year strategy is currently in development focussing on improving maternity pathways, reducing infant mortality, working towards the best start in life for children, mental health services, improving prevention services and better outcomes for those with disabilities and those in social care. Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board will work with local communities to reduce health inequalities through improvements to ethnicity and data coding to ensure that groups are identified and supported more effectively. In Herefordshire and Worcestershire, continuity of carer maternity plans are being developed through the Core20PLUS5 initiative, to address disparities in access to services for women. Herefordshire and Worcestershire’s inequalities strategy sets out how data sets will be combined to reduce health inequalities in tobacco dependence and maternity services.

The forthcoming Women’s Health Strategy aims to ensure that all women and girls have equitable access to and experience of services and disparities in outcomes are reduced. Further information will be available later this year.