JSNA Blog - March

Welcome to the JSNA blog for March 2026

As always, we welcome comments, feedback and suggestions.

We welcome your photos of Suffolk to use in a future blog!

Email us at: knowledgeandIntelligence@suffolk.gov.uk

Understanding health inequalities: Why they matter for Suffolk

Health inequalities aren’t inevitable. They’re the avoidable and unfair differences in health outcomes that exist between people and places. In Suffolk, as elsewhere, these gaps show up in life expectancy, long‑term conditions, access to services, and the everyday ability to live well.

We often hear the “causes of the causes” described in policy and research: income, education, work, housing, environment, discrimination, and access to care. These shape people’s opportunities long before they enter the health system. Locally, this can look like rural isolation, fuel poverty, insecure work, limited transport options, or people who face exclusion experiencing compounding barriers. Many residents experience more than one challenge at the same time, and those effects stack up.

Recent national data shows that healthy life expectancy (the number of years we can expect to live in 'good' health) has fallen to its lowest point since records began in 2011–2013, with most local areas across the UK seeing declines. This widening gap in healthy years reinforces why taking action on inequalities — locally and system‑wide — is so urgent.

In 2022-2024, UK males could expect 60.7 healthy years and UK females 60.9, representing drops of 1.8 and 2.5 years since 2019–2021.
Healthy life expectancy in Suffolk is broadly similar to the UK average for both males and females. Suffolk data for 2022-2024 indicates Suffolk males can expect to live for 62.1 years in good health, with females living for 61.7 years in good health.
When looking at the proportion of life spent in good health, this has reduced for both males and females in Suffolk between 2011-2013 and 2022-2024 - reducing from 79% to 73% for females and from 81% to 77% for males.

In context:

Language and accessibility matter. Nearly half of working‑age adults struggle with health information that includes numbers, and complexity or stress reduces understanding further. Making information clear, respectful and jargon‑free is a core part of equity.

Digital access is increasingly a determinant. From booking appointments to managing conditions, people need the skills, data and confidence to engage. When digital tools aren’t accessible, inequalities deepen—especially for those on low incomes, older residents, or people with limited connectivity.

Place still shapes outcome. Coastal communities, rural villages, and deprived neighbourhoods experience different barriers, and tailored action remains essential.

Protected characteristics and inequality aren’t the same, but they interact. Legally protected groups face higher discrimination risks, but inequalities also arise from socioeconomic and geographic factors. Many people experience several overlapping disadvantages at once.

What to do?

Addressing health inequalities isn’t just a health service issue—it’s a whole‑system responsibility. Reducing gaps requires improving outcomes fastest for those facing the greatest disadvantage, and that means aligning action across transport, housing, employment, digital, education, community assets, and clinical care.

Creating a more equitable Suffolk is long‑term work, but it’s built from everyday decisions: the words we choose, the services we design, the assumptions we challenge, and the communities we listen to. Small shifts add up. And when we get it right, the benefits extend far beyond health—they strengthen wellbeing, fairness and opportunity for everyone.

Data and insights

Having access to accurate data and insights helps in understanding where and how health inequalities impact Suffolk residents.

The Indices of Deprivation help us pinpoint neighbourhood‑level disadvantage.
The Local Inequalities Explorer Tool has been produced by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID). The purpose of this tool is to provide a resource to support decision making by demonstrating some local, within-area inequalities.
The OHID Inclusion Health tool supports identification of groups who face extreme inequalities.
Place‑based approaches to reducing inequalities are important- health inequalities are not caused by one single issue, but a complex mix of environmental and social factors which play out in a local area, or place - this means that local areas have an important role to play in reducing health inequalities.
Our Health Inequalities profile helps understand the evidence and local data. This helps us in gaining a clear, accessible picture of who is most affected and where targeted action can have the greatest impact.

View the profile and our other JSNA products using the JSNA searchable index below:

Recent national publications:

Trauma-informed care and racialised communities: This report explores how trauma in racialised communities is shaped by both historical and ongoing racism, and how current services often fail to provide culturally sensitive, anti‑racist support. It calls for trauma‑informed care that is community‑led, culturally grounded, and responsive to intersecting inequalities.
Scribe and prejudice? This paper from the Ada Lovelace Institute explores the use of AI transcription tools in social care.
Independent Investigation into Maternity and Neonatal Services in England – Interim Report: This interim report highlights consistent accounts from women, families and staff of not being listened to, unsafe or fragmented care, poor responses when things go wrong, and persistent inequalities — including racism, discrimination and variation in care that amounts to a postcode lottery. Although evidence‑gathering is ongoing, the investigation identifies deep systemic pressures across culture, leadership, capacity, estates and workforce, and stresses the urgent need for whole‑system change to prevent repeated failures and restore trust.
Avoidable mortality in England and Wales: 2024 Deaths from causes considered treatable or preventable given timely and effective healthcare or public health interventions, in those aged under 75 years.

This month the JSNA workplan is focused on:

Finalising a healthy pregnancy profile
Drafting the Mental Health Needs Assessment
We are planning annual updates to our core infographics on the website
Scoping new profiles on men's health, end of life, alcohol, substance misuse, Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), and respiratory health

The Suffolk Observatory

The Suffolk Observatory contains all Suffolk’s vital statistics. It is the one-stop-shop for data, statistics and reports all about Suffolk provided by a variety of organisations.

Through data, reports and analysis, the Suffolk Observatory provides a comprehensive picture of the county and is a great source for useful facts and figures that will help you write reports and presentations, inform strategic and business planning, prepare funding applications or support academic research.

Take a look at the SODA reports page for all the recent publications by the Suffolk Office of Data and Analytics.