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

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

What we have heard about:

Online healthcare / Primary care / Mental health / Community health & prevention / Social care / Building a Neighbourhood Health approach / Wider determinants of health / Community and system news

The report identified a ‘hidden waiting list’ exists before the official wait even starts, with people in Kent and Medway being nearly three times more likely than the national average, to experience a GP related delay to a referral for an ADHD assessment.

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. 

It has been identified that North Kent residents living with ADHD have avoided talking to their employers and seek workplace support.

People report that they often felt they couldn’t request reasonable adjustments without a formal diagnosis and they were fearful of negative consequences in the workplace.  

In Dartford, Gravesham and Swanley, our data indicates that people who identify with a white, or white British ethnicity are 72% more likely to report a positive experience of their general healthcare than other ethnicities.

Dartford is one of the most ethnically diverse districts in Kent. According to Census 2021, around 25% of Dartford’s population is from Black, Asian, Mixed, or other ethnic minority backgrounds, compared with around 11% across Kent overall.

This pattern of feedback about experience of healthcare in Dartford 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 Dartford’s rapidly growing and diverse 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.

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