Place-based approaches to reducing health inequalities: Evaluation Report

There is growing understanding that to tackle many complex public health issues such as the difference in health outcomes between populations and groups (health inequalities), there is a need to intervene at a system level, considering the contribution of, and relationship between, all aspects of place including services, civic organisations and policy makers, and communities themselves. To support this approach Public Health England (PHE) developed a suite of tools and resources known as ‘Place Based Approaches to Reducing Health Inequalities’ (PBA). The core offer of PBA is an online suite of resources available for all local systems to access, to enable cross-system leadership and action to address health inequalities. The resource was developed by PHE in partnership with Professor Chris Bentley, the Local Government Association (LGA), the Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH) and through close working with NHS England (NHSE). The PBA suite of resources includes guidance documents and tools to support local areas to implement practical solutions for reducing health inequalities.
In addition to the publication of resources, PHE tested the practical use of the resources at a system or place level through facilitated workshops and support in 4 pilot areas during 2019 and 2020. The support offer included planning with system leaders and delivery of focussed orkshops facilitated by Professor Chris Bentley and PHE’s National Health Inequalities Team. Workshops gave participants the space and time to apply the PBA tools to their locality and develop place-based plans to reduce health inequalities. The aim of these workshops was to:
• assist organisations to use PBA to identify and agree priority areas and collaborative, systematic action to tackle health inequalities in their areas, at scale
• assess the value of running such directed workshops as an additional resource to the online PBA resources, which are universally available
The University of Manchester was commissioned by PHE’s National Health Inequalities Team (HI Team) to undertake an evaluation of the 3 pilot sites (later expanded to 4) receiving the facilitated support offer and the roll out of the universal PBA offer. This document summarises evaluation findings and provides recommendations to inform the development of PBA. As part of this commission, the University of Manchester is also producing an evaluation guide for local areas and for PHE. These will be published separately when completed.