2003 INVES T M EWEST N T FPUBLIC O R HHEALTH E A LT H NORTH GROUP
Healthcare and Hospital Trusts Healthcare and hospital trusts have responsibility for: ◆
redesigning local services to reflect patient needs, and deliver safe, high quality services
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providing more opportunities for the involvement of patients, staff, and the public
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developing strategies to reduce health and health care inequalities, and delivering national and local priorities to improve the health of the local population.
Trusts will be performance managed by SHAs and will need to work closely with PCTs and other local partners. Most trusts are major employers and organisations in their local communities, and have the potential to contribute significantly to economic, social, and environmental development.
Regional Partnerships to Improve Health Joint working between the main regional agencies, and a task force involving a wide range of regional interests led to the production of a report, “Health, A Regional Development Agenda" in 1999. Its purpose was to set the “health” agenda for the North West Regional Assembly (NWRA), and the Northwest Development Agency (NWDA) on their establishment in 1999. The NWDA led strategy, “England’s North West: A Strategy towards 2020”, contained a commitment to produce an Investment for Health Plan for the region. Following the re-structuring of the NHS, a North West Health Group was established to steer the production of the Investment Plan. In addition to the Department of Health’s Public Health Team at Government Office North West (GONW) and the three SHAs, representatives of the Government Office for the North West (GONW), the North West Regional Assembly, and the Northwest Development Agency have worked together to produce the Investment Plan.
The North West Regional Assembly (NWRA) The Government’s White Paper, “Your Region, Your Choice”, sets out the vision for prosperous and thriving English regions, including proposals for elected regional assemblies in those regions where people wish to have them. The public health functions proposed for an elected assembly recognise the wider economic, social, and environmental influences on health, and the role elected regional assemblies would need to play to secure improvements in health.
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