York 2032

We've developed the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy because we believe health is precious, and we want more of it for the 200,000 people who live within our wonderful city of York.

York is already a healthy place and we can celebrate many things about the place we live, but we still have plenty of health needs and challenges.

Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy ambition:

All York residents (young, old and future residents) will enjoy happier, healthier, longer lives, proud of their city and living in homes that meet their needs, able to actively participant in their communities, with access to the right support at the right time.

Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy target:

York’s gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest communities will have significantly reduced.

Health and Wellbeing Strategy Big Ambitions and Big Goals

The key focus of the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy is focused around 6 Big Ambitions and 10 Big Goals.

Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy 6 Big Ambitions:

1. Become a health generating city
2. Make good health more equal across the city
3. Prevent now to avoid later harm
4. Start good health and wellbeing young
5. Work to make York a mentally healthy city
6. Build a collaborative health and care system

Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy 10 Big Goals:

1. Overarching goal: reduce the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest communities in York
2. Support more people to live with good mental health, reducing anxiety scores and increasing happiness scores by 5%
3. Bring smoking rates down below 5% for all population groups
4. Reduce from over 20% to 15% the proportion of York residents drinking above the Chief Medical Officer’s alcohol guidelines (no more than 14 units a week)
5. Reverse the rise in the number of children and adults living with an unhealthy weight
6. Reduce health inequalities in specific groups: people with a severe mental illness, a learning disability, those from an ethnic minority or a marginalised group, and reduce gender inequalities in health
7. Reduce both the suicide rate and the self-harm rate in the city by 20%
8. Improve diagnosis gaps in dementia, diabetes, and high blood pressure to above the national average, and detect cancer at an earlier stage
9. Reduce sedentary behaviour, so that 4 in every 5 adults in York are physically active
10. Reduce the proportion of adults who report feeling lonely from 25% to 20% of our population

The production of a Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy is a statutory responsibility for the Health and Wellbeing Board.

Health and Wellbeing Strategy Action Plan

The Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy Action Plan covers the first 2 years of the strategy’s lifespan. It is a living document that can be changed to reflect progress or new issues that may need to be addressed.

The action plan is mapped against the 6 Big Ambitions and the 10 Big Goals set out in the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

The Health and Wellbeing Board will receive regular updates on progress to deliver this action plan.