Tag: community health

A week to focus on health equalities

I was delighted last week to be able to join NHS England’s Health Inequalities Improvement Board to present on the importance of MSK health for equalities. I am also delighted that Bola Owolabi, Director of NHS England’s National Healthcare Inequalities Improvement Programme, has written the guest blog for the October issue of our newsletter.

We’ve chosen to highlight equalities during Bone and Joint Week this year because it is critically important. Poor MSK health contributes to and exacerbates health inequalities. MSK is fundamental to our ability to work, socialise, move, eat a good diet – in fact, all the things that enable us to stay healthy.…

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Thinking wider about workforce

I saw a tweet this morning from a local provider partnership seeking exercise instructors willing to train in falls management. The challenge of workforce is ever present in the NHS right now. I think we need to think more creatively and use the breadth of the workforce we have if we are ever to deliver on our ambition to improve the MSK health of the population and ensure excellent services for those who need them.

Community MSK is the backbone of MSK.…

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Community-powered MSK Health?

It’s been exciting in the last two years to be working with the BestMSK Health team at NHS England, and now also with MSK improvement work in Wales. There’s been lots of talk about co-production, self-management support, reducing inequalities and a focus on prevention. The direction is very much one that ARMA can support. Then I read A Community Powered NHS from New Local and I started to wonder if we are being brave enough, going far enough, thinking big enough.…

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Consortium to transform leisure facilities into MSK hubs

Good Boost introduces a UK health pilot aiming to explore how the untapped potential of leisure facilities could save millions from painful MSK conditions and billions for NHS.

  • Good Boost, ukactive, Orthopaedic Research UK, ESCAPE-pain and Arthritis Action have formed a health and fitness consortium to research transforming leisure facilities into MSK hubs
  • The project will design, develop and deploy a ‘blueprint’ that includes upskilled leisure teams, AI technology and new patient pathways that aim to improve MSK outcomes and reduce NHS waiting lists
  • UKRI provides £1.4m funding to consortium as part of Healthy Ageing Challenge
  • 20 million people in UK have MSK conditions, costing the NHS £5bn a year

A new health and fitness consortium has launched a two-year research project to investigate how to transform leisure facilities into musculoskeletal (MSK) hubs which can be accessed in every community.…

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A future where no one sees community MSK services as a low priority

by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA

The King’s Fund has just published the results of the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAR) questions on satisfaction with the NHS. Satisfaction has dropped by 17 percentage points since last year’s survey, with more people now being dissatisfied than satisfied with the NHS. The main reasons are waiting times (for GPs and hospital appointments), staff shortages and that the government does not spend enough money on the NHS. No one with any connection to health services will be surprised by any of this.…

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