Healthy Communities Together Project Brief

Leeds is an amazing city. It is a complex system with 800,000 people all contributing to create a vibrant and diverse city.

This system produces tremendous wealth and poverty. It produces positive health outcomes for many of its citizens. It also consistently produces patterns where some groups do not share in those positive outcomes. Leeds produces health inequalities; unfair differences in the health that some people can expect because of the way the city and the people in it work and live together

Four groups have been working together in Leeds as the Leeds Solidarity Network. They represent 4 different groups of people all of whom face extreme health inequalities over the course of their lives. These groups are:

• Gypsies and Travellers
• LGBTQ plus
• Asylum seekers and refugees and
• Sex workers.

Each of these groups is incredibly diverse. But they all share experiences around stigma and marginalisation that contribute significantly to the health outcomes that they may expect.

The project will research the ways in which the Leeds system creates the inequalities faced by these groups. As we build a picture of how the system creates the inequalities we hope to be able to find some interventions and new ways of working that will allow the system to create greater fairness and to reduce the inequalities faced by these groups.  To change the pattern that consistently produces health inequalities

The project is being run by Mike Chitty and Gemma Scire on behalf of a partnership between the Leeds Solidarity Network, Leeds Clinical Commissioning Group and Leeds City Council Public Health Team. The Leeds Solidarity Network comprises Leeds Asylum Seekers Support Network, MESMAC, Leeds GATE and Basis Yorkshire.

The project is funded by the King’s Fund who are also providing support and advice to the project.  The King’s Fund is an independent charitable organisation working to improve health and care in England. The project is funded by them until November 2021. At this point if sufficient progress has been made the King’s Fund and the National Lottery may continue to support the project for a further three years. Our aim is to secure this additional funding to help reduce health inequalities in Leeds.

How You Can Help…

We would like to invite you to help us with:

1. Information on the policies and guidelines aimed at reducing inequalities or developing inclusive services with respect to these 4 groups
2. Introductions to people with specific interest in health inequalities and services for the 4 groups covered by the project
3. Advice, guidance, support encouragement…
4. Examples of positive practice in the delivery or access of health care
5. Data on inequalities experienced by these groups and the contributory factors – objective data, opinion, beliefs, experiences.
6. Interesting practice we might learn from where other collaborations are working on similar projects

There may well be further ways in which you can contribute to the project too.  We would love to explore what they might be.

If you would like to learn more about the project or believe that you could help us in some way please contact us using the form below.

Best wishes

Mike Chitty and Gemma Scire

July 2021