We want everyone who lives in North Central London to be able to live a healthy life in a thriving community, with equal access to the services and support they need.
We coordinate and commission activities and services across five North London boroughs to achieve better health and better lives for all, working together with our residents, patients, and their families to design the services that they want to see.
We also work in partnership with local NHS services and local authority and voluntary sector partners. Our aim is that everyone has fair access to health and care services that anticipate and meet their individual needs at every stage of their lives.
What we do
Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) were launched in July 2022 and are part of the NHS. They play a vital role in developing and coordinating work across their local system to reduce health inequalities and improve the health of their communities.
The North Central London Integrated Care Board is responsible for deciding how the NHS budget in our area is spent and for achieving value for money in the ICS. We cover the five boroughs of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey, and Islington.
We are part of the wider North Central London Integrated Care System which is a partnership of NHS, councils, and voluntary sector organisations.
We have a legal duty to improve the health of children and young people, support people to stay well and independent, help tackle preventable illnesses, support those with long-term conditions or mental ill health, and care for those with multiple needs as they age.
We commission safe, effective, and efficient health services. We also support NHS trusts to make sure we are meeting national standards on, for example, waiting times for treatment, ambulance response times, personalised care and support plans, and cancer diagnosis. We support GPs in areas such as best-practice management of long-term conditions.
Where we’re going
Working collaboratively with our residents, patients, and partners, the ICB has developed an ambitious Population Health Strategy. This reflects a significant change in approach to how healthcare is delivered.
We want to focus more on health than sickness by supporting local people to live healthier lifestyles and to take control of their own health and wellbeing. We are using data and working with our partner organisations to identify when people are at risk of ill health at different points in their lives.
Our aim is to act early where health problems arise – or, where possible, prevent them from happening in the first place. We are also looking at the wider factors that affect health including air quality, employment, financial hardship, and social connections.
We want to make sure our residents have the best start in life, live more years in good physical and mental health, age within a connected and supportive community.
We also want to make sure that people who are employed in health and social care enjoy meaningful, flexible, and fulfilling careers. We’ve coordinated the development of an ICS-wide People Strategy to provide opportunities for local people and attract and retain high-quality staff in North Central London.
Developing new initiatives with local residents
Although we are a relatively new organisation, we already have strong working relationships across North Central London. We have a tried and tested approach to engaging local residents in developing new initiatives and improvements together. A huge range of projects are up and running across our five boroughs to tackle inequalities in health and the wider factors that affect health with support from the ICB.
These include encouraging lifestyle changes such as more physical activity, supporting interventions to tackle diabetes and obesity, educating people about high blood pressure, and improving wellbeing and quality of life for disadvantaged groups. All these projects are created in partnership with local people and tailored for specific demographic groups or areas where we have evidence of poorer health.
We are using what we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic to encourage more families to take up life-saving childhood vaccinations, and better protect our communities from serious illness.
Next steps
Across England and Wales, a number of health budgets have recently moved or are moving to Integrated Care Boards, including certain specialised services, dentistry, and pharmarcy services. This presents us with an even greater opportunity to bring together different parts of the system to deliver our ambitious Population Health Strategy.
We are also working with existing service providers across primary, community, mental health, and acute care to encourage early intervention, and proactive care. We believe this has real potential to transform health and care services in North Central London, helping more and more people to thrive and achieve their full potential.