Like so many since I started this job, this week has had a health and wellbeing strain running through it like a stick of Blackpool rock. I spent Tuesday morning with a group of professors at Keele University from the Medical School and the School of Social Sciences and Public Policy, and then most of Friday with Public Health England, along with meeting NHS providers and the usual round of internal meetings and conversations. There is no doubt in my mind that getting into prevention to reduce acute and chronic care is the only long-term answer to our health challenges.
I keep reminding myself that people living longer is a very good thing; my mother is a fit, if occasionally difficult, 84 year old, whose mother died in her early 70s. At present, the average person is living two years longer every decade, but most of that advance is not in good health, and that is our challenge. If we set ourselves the highly ambitious target of extending healthy life in Staffordshire by one year in the next five, we would probably only be standing still in terms of dealing with the demand on our services. The challenge is exacerbated in that our NHS provider colleagues are fixed by the scale of the immediate problem, and have little capacity to look to the future, although we all know that we must. It is down to us, along with the NHS commissioners and Public Health England to take the long view, using the big brains of such establishments as Keele University.
The good news is that our planning is progressing, and there is a feeling of movement. The NHS Commissioning Congress is getting up and running, with the Transformation Director working from SP1 which will help enormously in terms of integrating what we are doing with the Care Commissioning Groups and more widely with the NHS.