A presentation welcoming feedback on the draft version of the Herefordshire Health and Wellbeing Strategy ahead of the final version sign-off later in the year.

Matt Pearce (Director of Public Health) provided an overview of the draft Health and Wellbeing Strategy in order to invite comments from the board on the draft strategy. The principal points included:

1. The strategy focuses on a prevention-first approach; community empowerment; reducing inequalities; workforce and integrated ways of working; and outcomes of the strategy.
2. In addition to primary priorities (good mental health and wellbeing), there are a number of secondary/supporting priorities which emphasise the important role that is played in people’s overall health and wellbeing.
3. There are four identified goals that also reflect the wider factors that determine people’s health and wellbeing. These include:
   1. Thriving communities
   2. Healthy and Sustainable Places
   3. Opportunities for all
   4. Healthy People
4. The strategy also talks about what does a priority mean and there still needs to be further discussions as to how these are reported including the potential of the HWBB holding dedicated sessions to explore the priorities in more detail, in addition to reports being brought back to the board to report on whether these priorities are being delivered.
5. The two main priorities of the strategy are:
   1. Best start in life for children
   2. Good mental wellbeing throughout life
6. The two priorities reflect the ten-year period of the strategy and thus underline high-level outcomes.
7. The next step, once the strategy has been ratified, is to delegate to partnerships beneath the board to align existing work within the integrated care system and primary care networks. Ultimately, the intention of the strategy, in its current form, is to therefore emphasise the key-level outcomes going forward.
8. Against those two primary priorities and the six supporting priorities, there is consideration about how delivery of these priorities sit across the system (p20 of strategy).
9. There are high-level outcomes included within the strategy alongside the strategic outcomes, primary outcomes, and secondary outcomes. There needs to be some refinement in the coming weeks to fully understand what the impact will be.
10. In terms of governance, there has been discussion with partnerships regarding who owns the strategy and there have been early conversations with One Herefordshire Partnership potentially having oversight and holds the delivery groups to account.
11. The next steps of the strategy are ongoing consultations with partners and sign-off of the strategy on 27^th April. There are scheduled feedback sessions with the public on the 28^th and 30^th April, in addition to continuous engagement with the public going forward.

Councillor Pauline Crockett (Chair of the board) thanked the Director of Public Health and Mary Knower for the engagement consultation. The Chair then proceeded to ask members for comments and questions on the strategy.

Councillor David Hitchiner asked the director for clarification regarding ‘prevention and early intervention’ on page 10 of the draft strategy. The Director of Public Health explained that primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention are primarily associated with health and focused on preventing disease. The intention was to frame the three tiers of prevention across the wider sense of health including housing, the environment, lifestyle etc. and therefore encapsulate  ...  view the full minutes text for item 72