Report to:	East Sussex Health and Wellbeing Board.
Date of meeting:	16 July 2024
By:	Darrell Gale, Director of Public Health.
Title:	Annual Report of the Director of Public Health in East Sussex - Creativity for Healthier Lives.
Purpose:	To share the Annual Report of the Director of Public Health in East Sussex - Creativity for Healthier Lives and an update on previous and future reports.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

The Health and Wellbeing Board is recommended to review and champion the 2023-24 Annual report of the Director of Public Health in East Sussex - Creativity for Healthier Lives, ahead of wider dissemination and publication.

1. Background

1.1 Appendix 1 contains the 2023-24 Annual Report of the Director of Public Health in East Sussex - Creativity for Healthier Lives.

1.2 This report highlights how creative health, creative approaches, and creative activities have benefits for our health and wellbeing. These activities can include visual and performing arts, crafts, film, literature, cooking, and creative activities in nature, such as gardening. Approaches may involve creative and innovative ways to approach health and care services. Creative health can be applied in homes, communities, cultural institutions and heritage sites or healthcare settings. It can contribute to prevention of ill health, promotion of healthy behaviours, management of long-term conditions, and treatment and recovery across the life course.[1]

1.3 The Board should note that the 2023-24 Creativity for Healthier Lives report forms part of a series of Annual Director of Public Health reports. The reports have been developed to highlight and increase our impact on health and wellbeing locally by focusing on the wider determinants of health, the factors that create and sustain the health and wellbeing of our population, beyond the provision of universal free NHS healthcare. These include:

1. The 2019-20 Health and Housing report that focuses on health and housing in East Sussex.

2. The 2021-22 Work, Skills and Health report that considers the relationship between work, skills, and health.

3. The 2022-23 Connecting People and Places report on social connections and multi-agency work to tackle loneliness.

The previous COVID-19 related report 2020: A Year of COVID-19 in East Sussex, interrupted our planned series of reports focusing on the wider determinants.

1.4 The 2023-24 report will be disseminated widely and published on the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment website at JSNA - Annual Public Health Reports (eastsussexjsna.org.uk)

2. Supporting information

2.1 This year’s report builds upon the East Sussex Creative Health Position Paper - September 2023 and the Creativity and Health Evidence Review 2022.

2.2 The report includes contributions from key national and local figures from the creative health sphere and case studies from local agencies and projects.

2.3 The report is a key resource in making East Sussex a ‘creative health county’ and it outlines the key creative assets the county has that contribute to the health and wellbeing of our population.

2.4 The recommendations made in the report set out how we will work with new and existing partners. This will be through the strengthening of existing structures to focus on creative health, connecting local partners, and weaving it into existing public health programmes, whilst building collaboration beyond the county in research and external funding opportunities.

2.5 The report also includes a brief update on the previous report, Connecting people and places, and our progress against its recommendations.

2.6 The 2024-25 report will be on the health and wellbeing of coastal communities in East Sussex which will build on the Chief Medical Officer’s Annual Report 2021 Health in Coastal Communities in which Hastings was a case study.

3. Conclusion and Recommendations

3.1 The 2023-24 Annual Report of the Director of Public Health in East Sussex - Creativity for Healthier Lives is now available to be reviewed by the Health and Wellbeing Board.

3.2 The Board is recommended to review and champion the 2023-24 Annual Report of the Director of Public Health in East Sussex - Creativity for Healthier Lives, ahead of wider dissemination and publication.

DARRELL GALE

Director of Public Health

Darrell.Gale@eastsussex.gov.uk

Appendix 1 - 2023-24 Annual Report of the Director of Public Health in East Sussex - Creativity for Healthier Lives.