Buckinghamshire Joint Local Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2035

A review of our Joint Strategic Needs Assessment reveals:

Whilst people can expect, on average, to live longer than they did in the past, people in Buckinghamshire are spending more of their lives in poor health. People living in the most deprived areas die younger and spend more years of their lives in ill health. On average, people in the most deprived groups are likely to experience poor health well before retirement age whereas the least deprived can expect good health into their later life.

This period underpins our future physical and mental health. Good health and positive experiences in early life can set children on the path to grow up into healthy, happy adults able to achieve their full potential and contribute to society.

A good job is beneficial for health and not being in work is linked to poorer health outcomes. The numbers of working-age people in the UK experiencing work limiting ill-health are at a record high. The most common causes for sickness-related economic inactivity are mental health and musculoskeletal problems.

In Buckinghamshire, as nationally, our population is ageing and living with more long-term conditions. The proportion of Buckinghamshire’s population aged 75+ in 2043 will be double what it was in 2002. The number of people living with multiple long-term conditions will also increase with population ageing.

There is an increasing demand for health, social and voluntary and community services. Some of this increasing demand is for desirable reasons (people are living for longer, there is growing visibility of previously unmet need, there has been innovation and introduction of new treatments). But some of this demand could be reduced by ensuring people get the right care at the right time in the right setting or by preventing people from becoming ill.

We also know that some of our communities experience health inequalities. Health inequalities are unfair and avoidable difference in health, driven by the conditions in which we are born, grow, live, work and age and by differences in access to services.