Despite an increasing body of research evidence that demonstrates the ongoing health inequalities experienced by people with learning disabilities, there have been few changes in policy and practice.
In her debut blog, Rosalyn Hithersay presents a paper that describes a series of workshops that took place in 2013 with the aim of addressing this shift from evidence to action.
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Mark Horowitz summarises the new WHO and UCL Institute of Health Equity (Michael Marmot) report and research paper on social determinants of mental health. He concludes that it’s time to focus on the root causes of mental distress, namely poverty, unemployment, poor education and social isolation.
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John Baker summarises a recent Cochrane systematic review of cultural competence education for health professionals, which tentatively concludes that low quality evidence supports this approach.
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Ian Cummins reviews a recent systematic review of interventions designed to support SDM and asks: can shared decision-making reduce health inequalities?
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Caroline De Brun highlights the new guidance for commissioners of mental health services for people from black and minority ethnic communities, produced by the Joint Commissioning Panel for Mental Health.
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During her presidency of the BMA, Professor Sheila Hollins has hosted a number of seminars on issues faced by vulnerable groups in the NHS, one of which looked at the issues facing people with learning disabilities. This report by the BMA Board of Science aims to move towards ‘parity of esteem’, a term which is [read the full story…]
Background Personal Health budgets were introduced to enable people with long term conditions and disabilities to have greater choice, flexibility and control over the health care and support they receive. This month (April 2014), people who are eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare (NHS CHC) will have the right to ask for a personal health budget. [read the full story…]
Last year, we posted a guest blog by Pauline Heslop, a researcher at the Norah Fry Research Centre, who set out the alarming findings of a confidential enquiry into premature deaths of people with learning disabilities. The enquiry found that people with learning disabilities die significantly younger in England and Wales than people without learning [read the full story…]
Substance use is common in people with mental health problems, and this can have important negative consequences for health and social function. The high comorbidity of mental health problems and substance use is a major contributor to the shorter life expectancy of this population – a person with a severe mental disorder can expect to [read the full story…]
In the current economic climate in many countries across the world, the impact of socio-economic inequalities on mental health has become an important topic, not only in terms of supporting people, but in terms of planning a public health response to a rising concern. Poverty and low economic status is known to affect various aspects [read the full story…]
