Foreword by Jilla Burgess-Allen

This is my first Annual Report as Stockport’s Director of Public Health, but I first came to work in Stockport in 2005. I remember then that Stockport was known as a particularly polarised borough, one where the gap between rich and poor, between healthiest and least healthy, was wide. In 2011 I left Stockport to complete my Public Health Specialty training in the East Midlands. I returned here in 2023 and the same remains true. Those unfair and preventable differences in health outcomes for our residents have persisted, driven largely by deprivation. That is why I have chosen to focus this report on health inequalities and what we can do collectively to reduce them, making Stockport a fairer place to live.

In Stockport there is a 10-year gap in life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas. The inequality in the share of people’s lives spent in good health is even greater, such that people living in the more deprived areas of the borough can expect to spend over a quarter of their lives in poor health and their health is likely to deteriorate before they reach retirement age.

Because the inequalities we see are entrenched and driven by the way society is structured there are no simple fixes. And some of the changes that would increase equity can only be made at a national level. However, there are certain building blocks that all our communities need in order to be healthy and we can do a lot at a local level to put these in place. They are things like good education, good quality fairly paid jobs, affordable healthy food, family and friends, a warm home.

In this report I have included many examples of where in Stockport we are working to strengthen those building blocks especially for those most at risk of poor health. Much of this work sits under the umbrella of our Neighbourhoods and Prevention programme which is about building the foundations for healthy happy lives within and with our neighbourhoods, from our inclusive jobs fairs, to our family hubs, to our social prescribers; our Teams Around the Place, our Area Leadership Teams, and our Community Networks.

Alongside the facts and figures there are also people’s stories in the report, talking about the difference places like the Wellspring Project and services like the Family Nurse Partnership have made to them.

A central idea in the report is that trying to reduce inequalities by just targeting communities living in multiple deprivation will not be enough. This approach misses the bigger picture and doesn’t recognise the complexities of communities in Stockport where wealth and poverty exist side-by-side, where some people are asset rich and cash poor and where forms of exclusion are hidden below the surface. To respond to this complexity our strategies and policies as a Stockport system need to be proportionate to need and should aim to bring everyone closer to the good outcomes experienced by the top 1% of the population.

The recommendations in this report have been reached in discussion with partners across different parts of the Council and with partner organisations. They are a call for collaborative efforts across health and social care, education and early years, employment and the economy, housing, the environment and transport to create a more equitable future for all our residents.