Following the publication of Everything affects health and Mind the gap: What’s stopping change? the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has published a new briefing which calls for a cross-government delivery plan on poverty and inequalities for Wales.
With 74% of people in Wales worried about their ability to stay warm and healthy this winter, the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) is calling for a cross-government delivery plan on poverty and inequalities that sets out milestones, timelines and clear targets detailing what every Welsh government department is doing to tackle poverty, and how ministers are working together to reduce the impact of deprivation.
We are calling on the Welsh government to:
- Consolidate commitments on reducing inequalities and map out existing activity on public health, inequalities, poverty reduction and social security in one delivery plan to improve accountability.
- Provide more detailed national implementation guidance to local delivery bodies and introduce health impact assessment regulations as a priority.
- Develop a shared set of performance measures focused on reducing inequalities and improve access to high-quality, robust data for evaluation.
- Improve access to prevention programmes based in primary and community care, especially for those living in poverty, and invest in innovation, including screening programmes, vaccines and wearable technology.
- Ensure that funding encourages collaboration and is linked to tackling inequalities and require regional partnership boards (RPBs) and public service boards (PSBs) to tackle inequalities.