The experience of minority ethnic people symptomatic for COVID-19 in the first UK wave of the pandemic.

Building the Right Support was a national plan to provide better support to people with a learning disability or autism.

It said which services and supports are needed to help people whose behaviour challenges services or who have mental health problems.

This was because too many people were living in hospitals and assessment and treatment centres. Many had been living in such places for a very long time. Often they were a long way from their home, family and friends.

The Strategy Unit were asked by the Strategy and Development Team in the Directorate of the Chief Data and Analytics Officer, NHSE/I, to make recommendations for advancing analytical capability across the health and care workforce.

In January 2021, the Government published a White Paper, setting out its plans to reform the Mental Health Act. The Government invited views on the paper and in July 2021, it published a summary of the consultation responses and its plans to address the issues raised.

Risk stratification tools are ubiquitous in healthcare. The concept is simple and seductive. By predicting the risk of future adverse events, we should be able to target efforts to avoid/mitigate them. Doing so would save both money and misery.  

But, as Niels Bohr said wryly, “Prediction isn’t easy, especially about the future”. And the challenges of prediction increase as the thing we are trying to predict gets less specific (e.g. the risk of emergency admission in general). The challenges associated with risk stratification are nearly as great as its promises.  

Good mental health during early years and childhood has a great bearing on health throughout life. By contrast, poor mental health can cast a long shadow. Consequences may include depression, self-harm, and poor physical health.

Services recognise this. They aim to provide access to support in a timely and suitable way. A national target has been set, namely that 35% of children and young people with diagnosable needs should be able to access the necessary services.

Measuring the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on population health

One feature of the pandemic has been the fast-flowing stream of facts and numbers about the impact of Covid-19. At the same time, we’ve had to absorb the meaning of terms that were previously the preserve of epidemiologists and public health professionals.

Reducing health inequality is a long-standing aim of health policy. Yet the gap between policy aim and population outcome has grown in recent years: on most measures health inequalities have got worse.

The purpose of this work was to identify the key features of local initiatives which encourage vaccine uptake in different population groups, and share these for others to learn from.