New five year equality and diversity strategy
NHS North West has launched Narrowing the Gaps, a five-year strategy to address the significant gap in health outcomes across all population groups, particularly those that are marginalised and discriminated against.
This strategy is the response to an in-depth, year-long investigation into how health services are designed and provided to all sectors of the community, the results of which were published in Landscape of the Region last autumn. NHS North West is the first strategic health authority in the country to carry out such a detailed diagnosis.
Redefining success
At present, successful delivery of services is judged by ‘partial’ measures, which demonstrate excellent outcomes for only some of our communities. The strategy fundamentally redefines what a successful health service should look like – achieving excellence in service planning and delivery to all, not just some, groups.
The strategy also widens out our definition of health inequalities from solely deprivation, to encompass other equality aspects such as race, gender, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, age and religion and belief.
Narrowing the Gaps will help the NHS in the region target services more effectively, get better at prevention, improve engagement and attract and retain the best staff. These improvements will lead to a better patient experience, more patient-centred care and a high quality service for all.
We will do this by focusing on our five key goals:
1. increase the diversity, representation and improve the working lives of our workforce
2. develop data to monitor, information to manage and knowledge to act
3. develop the right services: targeted, useful, usable and used
4. move beyond legal compliance to initiating best practice
5. develop our specialists and leaders.
To obtain a copy of Narrowing the Gaps in PDF or accessible RTF format click here.
Updated: 16 June 2009