NHS LifeCheck was set up to:
- develop health and social care services that truly respond to people's needs
- prevent ill health by promoting healthier lifestyles
- reduce health inequalities by tackling differences in health between people from deprived backgrounds and the rest of the population
The development of NHS LifeCheck came from extensive consumer and stakeholder research. The following documents outline the policy background of NHS LifeCheck.
Choosing Health
The white paper "Choosing health: making healthy choices easier", published in 2004, outlined some important ways to help people make informed choices about their health. These were based on members of the public's views about what would work best for them, and included:
- Informed choice - people want to make their own decisions about choices that affect their health and to have credible and trustworthy information to help them do so.
- Personalisation - some people want help to make healthy choices and stick to them. However, current services can be difficult to use or do not meet the needs of some people, particularly those in deprived groups and communities. To effectively tackle health inequalities, support has to be tailored to individuals' lives, with services and support sensitively personalised and provided flexibly and conveniently.
- Working together - the public are clear that government and individuals alone cannot make progress on healthier choices. Real progress depends on effective partnerships across communities, including local government, the NHS, business, advertisers, retailers, the voluntary sector, communities, the media, faith organisations and many others.
Your health, your care, your say
In "Your health, your care, your say", the Department of Health engaged well over 40,000 members of the public in a debate about how health and social care services could best meet their needs. A regular personal health check, or MOT, was identified as the single biggest priority, cited by three-quarters of those taking part. Respondents wanted more and better information about health, which they believed would:
- help them take better care of themselves
- enable them to access services earlier and use them more effectively
- boost their confidence in the ability of health and social care services to meet their needs
The findings also highlighted the need for people from seldom-heard groups (including older people, young people, black and minority ethnic groups, low-income households, people with mental illness, people in residential care and people with substance misuse issues) to have access to the information, advice and support they need to lead a healthier, more independent life.
Our health, our care, our say
The concept of NHS LifeCheck was first outlined in "Our health, our care, our say", the 2006 white paper. The paper identified several important risks to people's health, including obesity, smoking, alcohol misuse, mental illness and sexually transmitted infections. It also explained how NHS LifeCheck would help people, particularly at critical points in their life, to understand the risks to their health and take steps towards a healthier lifestyle. It made a commitment to develop three NHS LifeCheck services - one for babies, one for adolescents and one for mid-life adults - and to promote them, particularly in deprived areas.
High quality care for all
"High quality care for all", published in 2008, set out the results of a review of the NHS. The report highlighted the need for patients to be given more information and more choice, and emphasised the role of personalisation in tackling health inequalities. It also explained how marketing would be used to encourage people to take greater responsibility for their own health.
For more information about the development of NHS LifeCheck, see Developing the NHS LifeCheck: a summary of the evidence base (PDF, 1.46Mb).
