The Chair asked the Board to notes that it had earlier in the year received a presentation on the Annual Public Health Report, which had highlighted that healthy life expectancy in women is consistently poorer in Tower Hamlets than elsewhere and the Board had resolved to bring the matter back to a future meeting.

Liam Crosby, Associate Director of Public Health provided a presentation on Healthy Life Expectancy and Healthy Life Expectancy in LBTH. The presentation noted that

• Life Expectancy is is a metric of mortality for a group(s) of people and is defined as the average number of years that would be lived by babies born in a given time period, if mortality levels at each age remain constant. Healthy Life Expectancy (HLE) is a key headline measure of population health, constructed by combining mortality statistics with survey data on self-reported poor health and is defined as the average number of years babies born this year would live in a state of ‘good’ general health, if mortality levels at each age, and the level of good health at each age, remain constant in the future
• Life expectancy has improved for both males and females, but inequalities in life expectancy by deprivation persist and may be widening
• Circulatory, Respiratory and (for males) Cancer are more common in deprived groups and contribute to the life expectancy inequality.
• Females in Tower Hamlets life fewer years in good health than males. This is an unusual sex differential in Healthy Life Expectancy
• The latest Census gives a good opportunity to understand local health patterns further
• Self reported health gets worse at older ages, which makes it important to age-standardise
• Females’ self-reported health in Tower Hamlets, relative to London averages, is much worse than males’.
• Females’ self-reported health is worse than males’, across all ethnic groups in Tower Hamlets;
• The gap is wider in Asian and Mixed ethnic groups
• The larger cohort of females who are long-term unemployed explains the sex difference in HLE

Further to questions from the Board, Liam and Board stakeholders provided more information on:

• How census data allows closer focus on the cohort of health inequalities, but does not necessarily pose solutions to how to address those. This needs to be a focus of the Board.
• How the Council’s employment team worked with those experiencing health issues, including long term issues, to help them into employment.
• The impact of Covid on data collection and quality
• The clinical priorities set out in the CORE20+5 framework

Further to the presentation, the Board discussed:

·         In-work poverty was a huge challenge in London. The focus on helping persons into employment may not address health inequalities.

·         How the Board could encourage other employers in the borough to improve their pay differentials to tackle in-work poverty. 

·         The scope for better integration between Council services and health services. Better connecting of services, including those from partners, could make tangible differences to some of the identified health inequalities.

·         How the insourcing of leisure services provided an opportunity to reach a wider audience for public health services.

·         The impact of housing and overcrowding in exacerbating reduced life and healthy life expectancy.

·         Isolation and hard to reach groups – promoting alternative access to services such as via local community groups, mosques etc. VCS organisations could offer learning and expertise from their work.

RESOLVED that the report be noted.