Health and Wellbeing in Sandwell

Life expectancy in Sandwell is 75.5 years for men and 80.8 for women, compared to the national figures of 78.6 and 82.6 years respectively. The gap between Sandwell and the England average has remained fairly stable for women but for men it has widened between 2000 and 2010. Since 2008 male life expectancy in Sandwell has increased faster than the national average, it is likely that this is associated with a focused programme of early identification and treatment of heart disease in primary care.

Over the last 10 years, early death rates from cancer and from heart disease and stroke have fallen but the rates for Sandwell remain worse than the England average.

About 25.9% of Year 6 children are classified as obese; this is higher than the average for England. Levels of hospital stays among those under 18, breast feeding rates, teenage pregnancy, GCSE attainment, alcohol-specific initiation and smoking in pregnancy are worse than the England average.

By 2030 the number people in Sandwell over 65 years of age who experience dementia is predicted to increase by 42%

Key Achievements

Sandwell has a long history of successful partnership working across health, local authority, local communities and a wide range of other stakeholders. Building on these relationships the new Health and Wellbeing Board has published an initial Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy based on the six objectives set out in the Marmot Review of Health Inequalities, with an additional local objective to ensure the needs of older people and people needing end of life care are fully represented. Tackling the social determinants of health is central to this strategy and it has been included on the Institute of Health Equity website as an example of best practice. More information, including links to the JSNA and Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy can be found on the Health and Wellbeing Board webpage.

Link to  - Sandwell Health and Wellbeing Information

Sandwell has made real progress in improving educational attainment. A greater proportion of pupils in Sandwell achieved 5 or more A*-C grades in 2011/12 than was the case nationally with Sandwell exceeding the national figure by 2.4%. There has also been significant improvement in the proportion of pupils who gained 5 or more A* to C GCSEs including English and maths. In 2007/08 this was 32%, by 2011/12 this had increased to 54%. This reduced the gap between Sandwell and national levels from 17% to 5%.

Concerted joint work across agencies and with local communities has resulted in a 33.3% decrease in teenage conceptions since 1998. In achieving this Sandwell has matched the improvements nationally and across the West Midlands.

Tobacco use remains one of the most significant public health challenges in Sandwell. Through an innovative payment by results approach the number of people helped to quit tobacco has increased and in 2011/12 this exceeded the targets set for the number of smoking quitters in Sandwell.

Through investment of over £250 million pounds since 2006, Sandwell has been successful in bringing 29,000 local authority owned homes up to the ‘Decent Homes’ standard.

Sandwell established the Sandwell Healthy Urban Development Unit in 2009 to join up work across health, local authority planning services and other stakeholders that have influence over the wider determinants of health. This work is nationally recognised as good practice. Building on this work Sandwell also coordinates a West Midlands healthy urban planning group which shares learning and experience across a wide range of different organisations. This group has produced comprehensive joint responses to both local and national consultations including the national planning policy framework and the West Midlands Local Transport Plan 3.