Joint statement on preventative approaches help tackle Scotland's growing health inequalities crisis
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A partnership of third and community sector organisations have come together to set out the urgent action required if we’re to see preventative approaches help tackle Scotland's growing health inequalities crisis.
Published jointly by Edinburgh Community Health Forum, Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (the ALLIANCE), SCDC & CHEX, and Voluntary Health Scotland, this joint statement comes as major policies and frameworks have set out prevention as a key approach to how public services should operate.
A key part of our role at CHEX is influencing national policy and practice on community led health and community development approaches to tackling health inequalities. We have worked in partnership to publish the Joint Statement, which sets out a series of urgent actions.
We need a clear definition and understanding of prevention
We need a clear, specific, and consistently applied definition of prevention to see this way of working properly applied across all levels of policy delivery. That means resources being allocated to prevention and the impacts of this approach being measured properly to capture the positive impact.
We must put the hard-to-do parts of policy into practice
Tackling the 'hard-to-do' aspects of policy implementation that take us beyond ambition and into reality. That means proper co-production with communities and the third sector, long-term investment, transparency and accountability, courageous leadership, evidence gathering, and working across silos.
We need a whole system approach with a properly resourced third sector
A sustainably resourced third and community sector that is treated as an equal partner in decision making with a public sector committed to working in, and with, communities. Prevention is complex and requires a whole system approach that includes the public, third and community sector - and those who directly experience health inequalities.
Building on what's there
We welcome the renewed prevention policy intent from Scottish Government and COSLA but stress it is now crucial that these ambitions are translated – without delay – into specific, fully resourced, and measurable actions at the national and local levels
We call for an approach that honestly and courageously acknowledges the precarious state of our public, third and community sectors.