The summary of progress against priority actions in the original Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy and update (September 2013) is reported in Appendix 1 and demonstrates that some significant areas work has been completed and most actions are underway. It is too soon to see and impact on health outcomes and the updated Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (2015) captures the health of the population of Devon. Two high level public health outcomes report on the impact of local approaches to reducing health inequalities. These are:
- increased healthy life expectancy
- reduced differences in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy between communities (including differences between and within local authorities).
In Devon the overall picture is encouraging with increasing life expectancy over time. However, the evidence suggests that the “inverse care law” persists in Devon, where those those people who have the greatest need for health services being the least likely to access them. The life expectancy gap at ward level in Devon now stands at 15 years; 74.6 for Ilfracombe Central and 89.6 in Newton Poppleford.