Your local Insight News brings you a snapshot of health and wellbeing Insights reflecting feedback abouts people’s experiences of living in West Kent.

We hope these Insights can inform your work to improve services for residents of West Kent.  

 What we have heard about:

Online healthcare / Primary care / Mental health / Social care / Building a Neighbourhood Health approach / Wider determinants of health

We have received 20 pieces of positive feedback on care that has been delivered digitally, which includes all the feedback that we have received on virtual wards. For those that spoke to us about their stay on a virtual ward, they commented on how it was beneficial to be back in the home environment and they still received responsive and diligent care.

Overall many individuals recognised the potential that digital services can offer, including its convenience for those that work and also how using the NHS App can increase patient advocacy.

Our research identified lower than expected levels of feedback from people about ‘shared care’ arrangements between ADHD specialists and their GP. We would like to try and understand why this is. Is it because it’s not happening?

If you are a GP who has experienced working in partnership with an ADHD specialist we would love to hear your experience to inform a wider picture of how shared care could improve people’s experience of accessing ADHD medication.

We would like to build a clearer picture of how gendered experiences are shaped by service design, clinical bias, and structural inequalities. If you would like to help fund a short research project, please contact us.

42% of people said ‘Service Accessibility’ was the factor that would have greatest influence in their perception of neighbourhood health. This was seen as better neighbourhood health equals shorter travel times, availability of local clinics, and integrated services. 

Public perceptions of service accessibility at a local level within the NHS show a mixed picture. We continue to hear from the public about the challenges in accessing GPs, waiting times for treatment pathways and growing concern about the levels of corridor care and A&E waiting times. The top priority for the public remains improving GP access. 

This is one of the highest levels of satisfaction we have heard. During the same time period we have been talking to residents of Swale, and in direct comparison, 58% of residents of Sheppey talked about the negative impact of public transport.

In West Kent our data indicates that people from Black, Black British, African or Caribbean ethnicities are 70% more likely to report a negative and mixed experiences of their general healthcare than other ethnicities.

In West Kent, Black communities are numerically small and dispersed but growing slowly. This pattern of feedback about experience of healthcare in West Kent raises important equity issues. The Kent and Medway JSNA data confirms overlapping social and health disadvantages and the local Health Alliance are initiating community-led, culturally responsive health initiatives but there are not yet systemic

Given West Kent’s slowly diversifying population, ethnic inequality in healthcare experience risks widening local health outcomes gaps. We would like to research these reported differences in experience, to inform the work happening at a local level, enabling targeted action to address ethnicity based differences in trust, access, and experience.

These issues were explored at the recent Kent and Medway Black Health Inequalities summit. Learning from peoples experience through the lens of intersectionality is vital to improving health equity locally. To be part of this research please contact us at hello@ek360.co.uk.

Questions that we ask can be about anything that might affect someone's health, social care or community.

These Insights add depth to our reflections and bring richness to our reports. When you answer the monthly question you are helping to paint a wider picture of how people are feeling across Kent and Medway.

Want to add your voice to the hundreds of others already having the conversation? Email us at voices.connect@ek360.co.uk.

For more information about any of the contents of this Insight Update, please email us at comms@ek360.co.uk.