Improving Health and Lives - IHaL

• Improve the health of (and reduce health inequalities experienced by) people with learning disabilities in England.
• Help people who commission services make better use of information.

The Observatory worked in three ways to achieve these aims:

1. Making information more easily accessible through written reports, the website and events.
2. Getting better quality information.
3. Supporting commissioners, providers and others to use the information

The NDTi has written best practice guides for commissioners and providers of services on the implications of the information gathered by Public Health England and the Centre for Disability Research.

We have written a series of reports looking at reasonable adjustments in a specific service area. The aim of these reports is to share information, ideas and good practice in relation to the provision of reasonable adjustments.

The service areas covered so far are:

• Annual health checks
• Blood tests
• Cancer screening
• Constipation
• Dementia
• Dysphagia
• Obesity and weight management
• Eye care
• Pharmacy services
• Postural care services
• Epilepsy
• Substance misuse

We worked in partnership with the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG) to develop the Health Charter for Social Care Providers. This is designed to support social care providers to tackle some of the health inequalities that people with learning disabilities experience thus improving their health and well-being.

There is guidance to support the implementation of the charter as well as a self-assessment tool. Providers can sign up to the charter and get further information here.

We produced a series of short information sheets showing social care staff how they can help people with learning disabilities to get better access to health services. Each information sheet contains a link to the supporting slide sets. This series can be found here.

About the IHaL website

The IHaL website, which was used to share information about their work on reducing the health inequalities experienced by people with a learning disability, has now been archived and will no longer be updated. It will continue to be available on the national archive. New information being published by the learning disability team at Public Health England (PHE) will increasingly be published on www.gov.uk. All learning disability related information published by government departments can be found on www.gov.uk by searching ‘learning disability’. This can be narrowed down to the work PHE have published by selecting Public Health England from the drop-down list of organisations.

There is the opportunity to join a Knowledge Hub group. This is a community of people interested in reducing the health inequalities experienced by people with a learning disability. If you have any questions or would like to join this group then please contact LDT@phe.gov.uk

To receive updates, or further information, from Public Health England about the learning disabilities health intelligence network please contact Donna Glover on LDT@phe.gov.uk

Please click here for a list of IHaL resources.