We aim to increase life expectancy for men and women in our ICS faster than the rest of the country, until the gap between ourselves and the England average is no more.
Our challenge
The quality of our health and care services delivered across the North East and North Cumbria is consistently rated amongst the best in the country.
We have a strong track record of being at the forefront of innovation and transforming care.
Despite this, overall public health is still amongst the worst in the country. Although there have been many improvements in recent years, for example the number of people dying from cancer or heart disease has decreased, fewer people are smoking and many are living longer; healthy life expectancy remains amongst the poorest in England.
"We want to change this by working together as an integrated care system whereby every partner organisation is fully committed to and focused on creating a common purpose and joint determination to drive improvements in health, wealth and wellbeing" - Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, chair of the North East and North Cumbria ICB
We have high levels of unemployment, low levels of decent housing, and significant areas of deprivation. These contribute to some of the starkest health inequalities, early death rates and highest sickness levels in England, driving much of the pressure that health and social care struggle to manage.
Improving population health
We have agreed a set of priorities to improve local population health, based on evidence about local health outcomes and informed by views of clinicians and stakeholders.
- Prevention, early detection and effective management of the biggest causes of premature mortality: cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory disease.
- Better lung health, with an ambition to achieve a smoke free generation and a fully smokefree NHS, including making every contact count.
- More effective management of frailty to ensure no one is admitted to hospital that could have been cared for more effectively in their own home with the right personalised care, and doing more to tackle social isolation with our partners.
- Ensuring the best possible maternal health and early years outcomes.
- Improving the emotional well-being and mental health of infants, children and young people, recognising the lifelong impact of adverse childhood experiences.
- Supporting and enabling everyone to have a good death and to be able to die in the place of their choice.
- Improving outcomes for people who experience periods of poor mental health and specifically those with severe and enduring mental illness.
- Looking after the health and well-being of our workforce and valuing the impact they can have on the health and well-being of their families and communities.
Our promises
Working together we are committed to making improvements to the health and care of the people in our local communities and reduce the health inequalities that exists in our region.
We will increase healthy life expectancy for men and women faster than the rest of the country, until the gap is gone, enabling our population to live happier, healthier lives now and in future generations.
We will invest in people and our staff – we will personalise care for individuals, encouraging them to confidently look after themselves, recognising that people are themselves experts in their own health and wellbeing.
We will invest in communities and the assets within them, working with people to help them to live healthier, happier lives.
We will consider the collective impact of our decisions and our actions on our population and the communities in which we live, before we consider the impacts on our organisations, our professions or ourselves.
We will focus our plans, our energy and our investment across the life course, supporting people to start well, live well and age well.
We will deploy our plans, our energy and our investment across our communities in proportion to the needs of those communities, thereby contributing to our efforts to reduce the inequalities we find.
Much to be proud of
As a health and care system we have much to be proud of, with some of the most accessible primary care services and best performing emergency care in the country, alongside a record of ground-breaking surgery and pioneering new treatments, world-class facilities and national centres of excellence.
We also have some of the best research and development programmes of any health system, developing the next generation of treatments, procedures and cures (including world-leading genetic research programmes) alongside dedicated research capacity through our Academic Health Science Network and Applied Research Collaborative.
"We are proud too of ‘an outstanding record of being outstanding’, with high and improving Care Quality Commission scores across our trusts."
Our medical training is rated as among the best in the UK (scoring first in 17 out of 18 quality indicators in the 2019 national GMC training survey), we are home to one of the UK’s top ten medical schools at Newcastle, and an innovative new medical school in Sunderland, dedicated to widening access to ensure the profession reflects the communities it serves.
By taking the lead in apprenticeships and training we have offered a way into highly skilled and rewarding professions for thousands of young people in our communities and our future generations.