www.24housing.co.uk/news/hancock-hints-at-closer-integration-of-the-housing-and-health/
Hancock hints at closer integration of housing and health
Health Secretary tells Policy Exchange: “We must hardwire good health into housing.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has hinted at a closer integration of the housing and health agendas planned by the ‘People’s Government’.
Hancock told the Policy Exchange: “We must hardwire good health into housing, transport, education, welfare, and the economy because we all know preventing ill health – mental and physical – is about more than just healthcare.”
The NHS long-term plan published early this year pitches place-based population health and investment in community-based solutions at a preventative level.
That was taken as pushing beyond provision of supported housing, and into how housing associations can leverage their social investment activity toward resident health and wellbeing.
Key issues for combining housing and health include:
Expansion of integrated care develop over the next five years
Development of population health at the level of place
Housing’s place in an integrated care system
Greater collaboration to address homelessness
Aligning investment across neighbourhoods to deliver health benefits for residents
Using place-based responses to improve experience of older age
Writing for 24housing, HACT chief executive Andrew Van Doorn said the role of housing in place-based population health will be “crucial” to the future success of the NHS.
Van Doorn referenced the role of housing in Primary Care Networks and Integrated Care Networks as “very important”, with housing associations as anchor institutions having the assets and resources to make a difference not only to residents’ lives, but to their local communities
The long-term plan recognised that to address the needs of the population now and in the future there needs to be investment in community-based solutions at a preventative level, as well as in redesigning healthcare services to bring together new delivery partners,” he said.
Some housing providers are name-checked as delivering “exceptional” health services, with Nottingham City Homes seen as a trailblazer with its Housing to Health service, estimated as saving the public purse over £2.1m last year.
Radian and Polar HARCA are pioneering social prescribing services in their local areas.
The GLA recognises the role that housing associations can play in delivering social prescribing services in the capital.
HACT, itself, is also working with numerous housing and health providers toward an integrated approach