York Health Prospectus

York health prospectus

The York health prospectus is used as our preliminary statement that defines where we are and where we want to be.

How we made this prospectus
The production of this document drew on a number of opportunities for conversation in the York health and care system. The York Big Question engagement exercise allowed us to ask our partners in the voluntary and community sector in York to run an engagement exercise for us across winter 2021/22, which involved them hosting a conversation with people around a very simple question: What helps you live a happy and healthy life?

The participants were asked to consider the question in a number of contexts: in the community they live, within health and care services and through other city services.

In April 2022, we hosted an open-invite co-production workshop to help us write this prospectus. Participants were asked to focus on a number of areas of health: children and young people’s mental health, social isolation/ connectedness, living with long term conditions, and health and care services, and asked two key questions:

‘In ten years, if nothing has really improved, describe what York looks like’ and ‘In ten years, if things are radically different, describe what York looks like’

We are grateful to several senior academics within York’s higher education sector for their input into the process. They talked through with us a number of international models for health-generating city systems, including the Marmot City approach, the WHO Healthy Cities indicators, the Preston Model (community wealth building), Doughnut Economics, and the Welsh ‘Future Generations’ Act.

The York Health and Care Partnership also held a workshop where a number of well recognised ‘strategic inquiry’ questions were posed, aimed at generating meaningful, deep and challenging conversation about the issues we will need to tackle through the newly reformed health and care system. These questions were:

Where is the system now? Where does it need to be? Where are you in your own practice?

The York Health Prospectus is available now.