The challenge
In 2021, The Mayor of London’s office published the London Health Inequalities Strategy Implementation Plan stating that “stark health inequalities continue to blight the lives of many Londoners. At a basic level, this means some groups die much earlier and spend more of their life in ill health than others. This does not happen by chance. These health inequalities result from a range of social, economic and environment factors largely beyond people’s individual control. This is unjust and unfair. However, they are not inevitable and can be reversed.”
The Plan outlines a series of commitments and objectives for London, based on London’s Health Inequalities Strategy, and sets out a vision to reduce health inequalities across the city.
Our approach
As the Implementation Plan required many partners and stakeholders across the city to work together, we worked with the Greater London Authority to design a series of workshops that would not only bring the Plan into reality, but also bring together and energise the system to tackle inequalities across the capital.
We formed and engaged with working groups across each of the six priorities set out in the Plan to understand the main problems affecting Londoners and how a pan-London forum could most effectively drive those agendas forward.
We carefully facilitated a series of working groups to bring together voices across health, care, pan-London organisations and the VCSE sector, and conducted a review of documentation to understand current commitments and approaches to tackling inequalities across London.
Our impact
With this information, we developed a forward-looking engagement strategy to increase awareness of health inequalities and build buy-in for the mayoral commitments. Through implementation, the workshop plans and engagement strategy we developed have been put into place, with pan-London forums having taken place and cementing ongoing partnership working to inform the future work across London to addressing health inequalities.
