Nottingham Insight

Introduction

Health and wellbeing is a broad, holistic concept that includes physical, mental and social wellbeing. It also looks at health from a life course approach, in other words from cradle to grave. Behavioural or lifestyle factors such as physical activity, diet and alcohol consumption influences health and wellbeing, as well as wider determinants of health such as air quality. These factors interact and impact on individual and population health.

Nottingham City Council and its partners have a responsibility to improve the health and wellbeing of its population. Partners include Nottingham City Clinical Commissioning Group and NHS England. Under the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, they come together as the Nottingham City Health and Wellbeing Board.

In order to fulfil this responsibility, Nottingham City Health and Wellbeing Board members are required to review and assess the health issues within the population to develop an understanding of health needs. They do this through the production of Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNAs) which is a statutory duty. JSNAs are individual chapters on specific health and care issues that provide comprehensive assessments of current and future health, wellbeing and social care needs. They inform actions and commissioning decisions that Nottingham City Council, NHS and other partners need to take to meet these needs and address the wider determinants of health. Happier Healthier Lives, Nottingham City's Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2016-20, translates JSNA findings into remedial action.

JSNA chapters are grouped under:

• General Resources (such as Life Expectancy which cuts across other groupings)
• Children and Young people (for example the Children in Care chapter)
• Adults (such as Adult Drug Users)
• Behavioural Factors and Wider Determinants of Health (including Alcohol and Air Quality)

Other Public Health documents in this section include:

• Health Needs Assessments (HNAs) – these are systematic ways of identifying a population’s unmet health needs to inform commissioning to meet those needs
• Health Equity Audits (HEAs) – these are review procedures which examine how health determinants, access to services and related outcomes are distributed across the population