Sometimes the question needs to be asked: is your health or wellbeing partnership actually leading to improved health for local people and communities? Durham University’s School of Health, supported by the IDeA’s Healthy Communities team, is researching into the effectiveness of partnerships. The focus is on how partnerships are improving health and tackling health inequalities through local area agreements (LAAs). Researchers at Durham University have conducted a systematic literature review into partnerships in public health. A summary of this review has just been published. The findings will interest anyone who has responsibility for, or sits on, a local health partnership. Most literature on partnerships focused on processes and structures, not outcomes. Area-based partnerships did not achieve better improvements to population health in contrast to comparator areas. Constantly changing priorities and structures may have a detrimental impact on partnerships. Some partnerships suffer from not having appropriate or adequate financial or human resources. In some partnerships, many of the targets focused on partnership processes, not health outcomes.
Local ‘champions’ were seen as crucial in partnerships. Over the next two years, the project will follow up this review by studying a number of council and primary care trust (PCT) health partnerships. The team will be looking for evidence of actual improvements in health outcomes for local people and communities. Partnerships in Public Health: A Healthy Outcome? (PDF, 6 pages, 38KB): http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/public.health/news/PartnershipWorkinginPublicHealth-SummaryLiteratureReviewFindings.pdf

Weblink

2 October 2008
© IDeA