Our Collective Ambition: Health Equality

What matters to me is that I have ‘Health Equality’ – this means that I have the same opportunity of good health and wellbeing, dignity and respect regardless of:

• my ethnicity, race or religion
• my age, gender or if I identify as LGBTQ+
  if I am living with a physical, sensory or learning disability
• my circumstances – if I am experiencing deprivation, homelessness or growing up in care
• if I live in a coastal, rural or traveller community

Our Collective Ambition is to enable ‘Health Equality’ to be an opportunity for everyone in Suffolk and North East Essex.

We will do this by:

• ensuring that a focus on health equality is woven through every aspect of our work as an Integrated Care System
• recognising and focusing on overcoming the many different barriers to health equality that exist through health equity, inclusion and social justice
• being allies to people experiencing marginalisation or disadvantage, speaking out against discrimination and injustice
• being aware of both our own individual unconscious bias and the structural and institutional discrimination that exists in our wider health and care system
• assessing the equality and health inequality impact of what we do both as individual organisations and collectively as a health and care system
• everyone being accountable for maintaining continued effort over time and monitoring the impact of our actions in the short, medium and longer term.
• taking a population health management approach that maintains a strong focus on prevention and helps keep people healthier longer
• taking action in our ICS at every opportunity to reduce health inequalities in smoking cessation, early cancer diagnosis, high blood pressure, supporting those with chronic respiratory disease and severe mental illness and improving maternity care
• taking action in our ICS at every opportunity to reduce health inequalities for children and young people in asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, oral health and mental health.