Outcome 5

We will add 100,000 healthy life years to the people of Dorset by 2033.

Why it’s important

What we’ve been doing

What are we going to do

How we’ll measure progress

Why it’s important

We know you want to enjoy a long and healthy life. As well as providing high quality services for you when you are unwell, we are committed to supporting you to live the healthiest life you can by preventing illnesses as much as possible and addressing things that can lead to poor health and wellbeing.

  • Prevention and early detection: we will focus on preventing diseases by promoting healthy lives and finding diseases early through regular screenings and checkups and earlier access to healthcare for underserved groups.

  • Chronic disease management: we will focus on managing chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer to stop things getting worse and improve your quality of life.

  • Access to care: it is important that everyone has access to quality healthcare services, regardless of where they live.

  • Health education: we will increase awareness of the steps people can take and the support they can get to be healthy, prevent disease and manage long-term conditions, so that people can have the best chance to tackle the things that get in the way of being healthy.

  • Social determinants of health: things like poverty, education, and housing have a far bigger impact on health than treating sickness. To improve the health of our communities, it is vital we look at these issues.

  • Technology and innovation: we will be bold and determined in using technical innovations to improve how we deliver healthcare services, increase efficiency, and improve your health outcomes. We want to be world-class in using data, artificial intelligence and digital solutions to improve lives. By doing this we will make sure we continue to provide services that meet the needs of people who are less able to use digital services.

By implementing these strategies, we will add to your healthy life years and improve overall health outcomes. Our ambition is based on adding five years of healthy life expectancy in our most deprived areas by 2043, aligned with national ambitions for life expectancy.

What we’ve been doing

We have a service called LiveWell Dorset. Through LiveWell you can get help to make healthy choices, look at the things that get in the way of being healthy, and make life better. The team are supporting people in moving more, managing weight, quitting smoking, and drinking less. You can access this service yourself or someone might put you in touch with them.

Right now, we are trying out new ways to help people with serious mental illness through LiveWell Dorset and our outpatient health villages. We are working closely with Active Dorset on a project which helps people with muscle and bone problems to be more active. The physical activity programme ‘movement for movement’ looks to support everyone to move a little more every day, with specialist help for those who would benefit most from moving more.

We have been helping pregnant people to quit smoking, and we have a service called tobacco dependency treatment to support them. We have expanded this support to all people staying in hospital and are testing it out for those who are getting long-term mental health services as outpatients.

Doctors in primary care can recommend a few national programmes to help people to lose weight. One is the National Diabetes Prevention Programme, which helps those who are at risk of developing diabetes.

Another is the Digital Weight Management Programme, designed for people who are overweight and have diabetes or high blood pressure. GPs and community pharmacies also offer NHS Health Checks to calculate the risk of cardiovascular disease and help lower it if possible. GPs take part in a national audit called the Cardiovascular Disease Prevent Audit to see how well we do as a system to identify and manage conditions like high blood pressure.

We encourage you to ‘know your numbers’ and get your blood pressure checked regularly.

We are committed to providing cancer screening and supporting people in their recovery from cancer. This includes making sure that people with serious mental illness, learning disabilities and those who are homeless are able to get to screening services. Screening programmes focus on identifying various types of cancer, such as cervical, breast and bowel cancer. They also target people who are more likely to develop other health problems such as eye screenings for diabetic retinopathy and screenings for abdominal aortic aneurysm.

We have been focusing on digital innovations. This helps us to make sure everyone has fair access to digital health services. We use these innovations to identify the right people who can benefit from digital tools for managing long-term health conditions. We also track the outcomes and results of using these tools for self-management of health conditions.

What we are going to do

As part of our plan in outcome one on page 28, we set out how we want to make things fair for everyone and prevent problems before they happen. We will focus on groups of people who are more likely to develop health problems and on areas of healthcare that are likely to lead to early death. This includes people living in more deprived areas and the five clinical areas for adults and children that are most likely to lead to poorer health. These are known as CORE20PLUS5. We will look at how we can make sure everyone gets fair access to services and support. We want to make sure that children, young people and adults can easily get help for their mental health and emotions. We will work hard to make sure that at least 60% of people with severe mental illness get regular physical health checkups. We will look closely at children and young people in different groups to understand their needs better.

As part of our plan in outcome three on page 43 we set out how we will work with communities to give resources where they are needed, make better services for everyone, listen to communities and use our resources wisely. This outcome builds on that, with a focus on some key areas we know we could do better working together. The cardiovascular disease audit has highlighted we could do better in by identifying people with high blood pressure.

Working with Public Health Dorset, we will continue to support the roll out of the tobacco dependency treatment service in our hospitals and other areas. We will also help more people take up the advice services offered by LiveWell Dorset so more people can live healthy lives.

To help people with cancer, we will look at how different groups of people get access to treatments and how they recover. We want to make sure that everyone, no matter who they are, can get the right care. Working with our partners we will put in place programme to help prevent cancer, diagnose cancer early, achieve great outcomes, and treat our patients as individuals — with person centred, equitable care.

We will work with those affected by cancer to plan and find solutions. We will also find out what other needs people have when they are diagnosed with cancer. We will do this by talking to them and reviewing their health needs and then working with community organisations to make sure they are supported.

We want everyone to have a fair chance at being healthy, so we work hard to make things equal. This includes how we design services, plan treatments and choose which services we provide. We also look at how we organise our waiting lists. Last year, we used a tool to help us understand who might need more support.

This year, we will focus on making sure that everyone waiting for the same treatment has equal results. To do this we will be changing how we manage our waiting lists and looking at things that are not always just related to medical reasons. We want to make sure people who need planned care can get it earlier, instead of waiting until their condition gets worse and needs emergency care.

To make sure you get the tests you need as quickly as possible we are working on a programme called community diagnostic centres. Our goal is to increase the number of people who get tests within six weeks. We also want to give GP practices the ability to directly ask for certain tests, which will help to speed things up. We will look to make sure that some people don’t wait longer than others for their tests. This is part of a national effort to improve access to diagnostic tests for everyone.

From April 2023, we took on the responsibility for commissioning pharmacy, optometry, and dentistry services in Dorset. We are developing ways to improve access to these services and to make sure they are provided by joined up teams in communities.

We will be encouraging you to ‘know your numbers’ and get your blood pressure checked regularly so you can take preventative measures to avoid future illness.

How we are going to measure progress

We have a number of measures that we will monitor which will tell us if we are helping you to access the services you need in the right place.

You will see:

  • fewer people smoking

  • more people taking up prevention services such as stop smoking, physical activity and weight management

  • lower waiting times for our services such as tests, cancer services, planned appointments and surgeries

  • better access to care closer to where you live including dental services, ophthalmology and pharmacy services.

  • fairer access to our services so that some groups of people are not missing out.