Soton council new and improved health and wellbeing strategy

Southampton City Council introduced the replacement Health and Wellbeing Strategy for approval today at a meeting in the Civic Centre. This new strategy for 2017-2025 replaces the 2013 one which ran previously, but targets areas in new ways. It promises to prioritise areas such as mental health and problems affecting young people.

The Council is required to have a Health and Wellbeing strategy, however it was designed to align with the current City Strategy’s vision to be a city ‘where everyone thrives.’

Many issues such as suicide rates, childhood obesity, physical inactivity and air pollution are worse in Southampton than the national average. The new strategy plans to prioritise these areas and others.

Some Councillors were concerned that the new strategy isn’t different enough from the current one and prioritises so many areas that it’s likely to be ineffective. One councillor argued, “Identifying the handful of health problems to focus on would be far more effective.”

The new strategy aimed to make mental health be seen and treated as just as important as physical health. As one councillor pointed out, “mental health for a long time has not been given the same attention as physical health.”

A hot topic was that concerning children. Childhood obesity and tooth loss or alternatively tooth exactions, both of which relate to eating habits. It’s a problem the council are struggling to control but drastic change needs to be made.

A councillor suggested that the problem with children is that the problems are addressed after they’ve began to happen. “Get the health of children right, from conception.”

All the issues targeted in the strategy stem from engagement with 900 Southampton residents to establish what they saw as the problems which need addressing.