Healthy communities

Did you know that only 25% of the difference in ageing is genetic? The rest is due to environmental factors and personal lifestyle choices.

Health services play an important role in treating people when they are ill but who becomes ill and who stays healthy in the first place is determined by a wide range of influences such as employment, income, living and working environment, supportive social networks and personal skills. Many aspects of local government core business have a large impact on these factors that determine our health.

Our role

Promoting the health and wellbeing of the people in Buckinghamshire is important to us and is central to the services and support we provide such as:

Encouraging active lifestyles
Education
Employment and economic growth
Planning for future growth and development
Community safety and enforcement
Public transport and waste management

What are we doing?

We are delivering a wide range of services and initiatives that promote the health of the local population
We are working in partnership to deliver the Buckinghamshire Healthy Communities Strategy (attached below). The strategy’s focus is not the development of health care services such as GP practices and dental surgeries, but working to tackle the broader issues that have a major impact on people’s health. This includes work to

- reduce deaths from heart disease and stroke

- address childhood poverty

- improve the uptake of welfare benefits

- support older people through the Age Well in Buckinghamshire project

- promote walking

- reduce carbon emissions for all public sector organisations

- promoting physical activity through walking will help to address the rising tide of obesity which can lead to increased Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Take a look at walkit.com, Simply Walks in your area and improvements to footways and carriageways.

- maximising benefit uptake and debt management is particularly important in the current economic climate and can help reduce homelessness by supporting people to pay rents and stay in their own homes.

- reducing Local Authority emissions by 4% will benefit the environment and help combat climate change

Through the Local Area Agreement we are also working towards:

tackling anti-social behaviour
increasing adult participation in sport
reducing obesity in primary school age children

We have just completed a joint needs assessment with the Primary Care Trust to gather information about the current and future needs of the Buckinghamshire population. This will be used to inform the planning of services and to decide how resources should be shared between services.

For more information call 01296 383459 or email healthycommunities@buckscc.gov.uk

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