Warwick District Council outline four 'areas for improvement' in health report

HEALTH bosses are targeting four key issues in the districts of Warwick and Stratford despite the areas enjoying the best outcomes in Warwickshire.

Dr Shade Agboola, director of public health at Warwickshire County Council, highlighted hospital admissions for alcohol-specific conditions in under-18s, unintentional and deliberate injuries in children, dementia diagnosis rates and bowel and breast cancer screening rates as “areas for improvement” while addressing a meeting of Warwick District Council this week.

A county-wide report shows that while hospital admission for alcohol-specific conditions in under-18s has fallen from 47.4 people per 100,000 in the population to 41.1, Warwickshire’s tally is still significantly higher than the average for England – 29.3.

Dementia diagnosis crept up in 2021 but Warwickshire was still more than seven per cent behind the national average, while falling uptakes on cancer screening are also behind national standards.

“Even though the health and wellbeing of people in Warwick district and Stratford is better compared with Nuneaton and Bedworth, North Warwickshire and Rugby, we have some areas where we probably still need to do a bit of work,” said Dr Agboola.

“I wouldn’t call them challenges, there are opportunities for us to do a bit more.”

On cancer screening, she added: “Some of the statistics we are seeing are a direct fallout from Covid when preventative services more or less ceased.”

The report also showed the districts of Warwick and Stratford benefit from higher life expectancy than other areas of the county, numbers that are allied to deprivation.

The gap in male life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas of Stratford is 3.5 years, a figure that rockets to 9.9 years in Nuneaton and Bedworth. The county’s average is 8.3 years with Warwick coming in at 7.7 years.

Dr Agboola said: “There is a general consensus now that life expectancy across England has stalled.

“There were improvements recorded up until 2010, 2011, and then we saw a halt and reversal in progress for certain, most deprived, groups.

“In Warwickshire, life expectancy is better than the regional and national average and for Warwick district and Stratford it is better as well.

“Ideally, we want there to be no difference between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, everyone should live up to 80 or 90 in good health, but what we are finding is that while people are living longer up until the point where life expectancy stalled, we are spending more of that time in ill or poor health and that is not ideal.”