The West Yorkshire Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism Collaborative (WY MHLDA) was formally established in 2018 and aims to reduce the gap in life expectancy between people with mental health conditions, learning disabilities and/or autism and the rest of the population.
A core feature of the WY MHLDA Collaborative is its in-depth work on public health and health inequalities. Demonstrating this commitment, all workstreams within the collaborative have health inequalities integrated within their objectives.
Action taken
The collaborative has a focus on intervention and prevention, and they are building that lens into all the services that the collaborative is delivering. Fundamental to this work has been the recruitment of a consultant in public health with a clinical background who joined the collaborative's senior leadership team.
The role of the consultant in public health is helping to provide specific public mental health expertise to the collaborative and the wider system with a particular focus on reducing health inequalities, as well as leadership on data and intelligence and how the trusts record and define data.
Outcomes and impact
The consultant in public health has joined up the dots and shared experience and examples of the work already being done by each trust and across the system to reduce health inequalities, including working with the social justice system and housing.
The consultant in public health is using available data and information to drive the collaborative's population health management work. Their expertise also helps to gain traction on health inequalities issues and make a strong case with robust evidence to system decision makers.
Examples of their work include:
- Facilitated co-production around the patient and carer race equality framework.
- Population segmentation modelling to support prioritisation around ADHD and Autism.
- Flexible input into integrated care board-led workstreams, such as a recent 'health and growth accelerator' programme to boost people's health alongside tackling the conditions that most impact people's ability to work.
Read more about the work of The West Yorkshire Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism Collaborative, whose partner trusts are Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust, South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.