Essex Joint Strategic Needs Assessment

Foreword

We are proud to introduce the first pan-Essex Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA). It represents a fantastic partnership effort across health and local authorities (county, unitary, district and borough1) and has already played a significant role in enabling partners to determine shared priorities for inclusion in local and county sustainable community strategies. It has also helped shape the future priorities that partners need to include in our next Local Area Agreement.

We produced this JSNA in response to the Department of Health’s consultation document, Commissioning Framework for Health and Well-Being. It is intended to help us achieve:

  • a shift towards services that are personal, sensitive to individual need and that maintain independence and dignity;
  • a strategic reorientation towards promoting health and well-being, investing now to reduce future ill health costs;
  • a stronger focus on commissioning services and interventions that will achieve better health and improve the quality of life with all partners working together to promote inclusion and tackle health inequalities.

This JSNA is the first step in helping us accomplish this. It provides analyses of data to show the health and well-being status of local communities; defines where inequities exist. It also incorporates, where possible, local community views around priorities for service improvement. It is therefore a robust evidence-base for us to agree the strategic direction of service delivery and we will use it to inform our future commissioning and to improve outcomes for the residents of Essex, Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock.

In recognition of the importance of engaging all key partners and understanding the distinctive nature of different parts of Essex, we have produced a local profile for each of the twelve district / borough councils and the two unitary authorities together with a full JSNA covering the whole of the county of Essex. While not wishing to duplicate work already undertaken, the JSNA takes a broad view of health and well-being, considering the wider determinants of health and quality of life.

We are aware that, this time round, all is not perfect. Some data is not available in the form we would like it and there are more powerful analytical tools that would support better identification and understanding of geo-demographic groups for the effective targeting of our resources. The focus for this JSNA has been to streamline existing intelligence but the intention is to strengthen population segmentation, forecasting and community involvement in future.

Our thanks goes out to all those who were involved in the production of this JSNA and we look forward to continued collaboration and integrated working to enhance the lives of the people of Essex, Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock.

Signed

  • Councillor Pamela Challis, Essex Local Strategic Partnership
  • Katherine Kirk, Southend Local Strategic Partnership
  • Councillor Terry Hipsey, Thurrock Local Strategic Partnership

Children's Chapter

Following on from the publication of the first pan-Essex Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) it was recognised that the range and scope of information around children and young people was under represented and was important enough to warrant its own JSNA chapter. This chapter has now been developed and can be found on the JSNA - Children's Chapter page within the Children and Young People section of this website.

Joint Strategic Needs Assessment

Note: documents are PDF files, see how to access PDF files.

Archived Chapters