OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY WEEK 2021
Let ’ s shine a light on our role in addressing health equity , profession is urged
Monday 1 November saw the launch of our # OTsForEquity campaign and Occupational Therapy Week 2021 , with a pledge from the Royal College to focus on working with you to shine a light on the role occupational therapists currently play in addressing health equity .
Over 700 of you tuned in to the launch event and to watch the re-screening of Professor Sir Michael Marmot ’ s plenary session from this year ’ s RCOT Annual Conference , where he called on government to ‘ put a fair distribution of health and wellbeing ’ at the heart of its policies . This was followed by a lively and engaging Q & A session with a live panel .
Professor Diane Cox , RCOT chair of council , said : ‘ The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the increase in health inequalities across the UK . Whilst in theory , everyone in the UK has the same access to healthcare , in reality the causes of ill health are very different depending on where you live , your socio-economic class and your ethnicity .
‘ The pandemic has highlighted how poverty , deprivation , employment and housing are closely related to health and mortality .’ In his presentation , Sir Michael talked about taking action to reduce health inequalities as a matter of social justice . Comparing statistics on life expectancy between 1980 and 2010 , he said that while poorer people do have worse health than everyone else , the real message is that the less the depravation , the longer the life expectancy .
In stark figures , he demonstrated that for over 100 years life expectancy had been consistently improving ‘ for about one year for every four years ’ for both women and men , but that between 2010 to 2011 ‘ there was a break in the curve ’ and the rate in increases slowed dramatically .
Looking at other countries ’ annual life expectancy in weeks between 2011 to 2017 , Sir Michael concluded that the UK had the slowest life expectancy improvement of any rich country , apart from Iceland and the US .
He identified four culprits : poor governance and political culture ; increased social and economic inequalities ; reduction in spending on public services ; and the UK being unhealthy coming into the pandemic .
‘ My overall recommendation is to put a fair distribution of health and wellbeing at the heart of government policy ,’ he urged . In essence , his message was that in developing strategies for tackling health inequalities , we need to confront the social gradient in health , not just the difference between the worst off and everybody else .
The panel comprised : Rachel Booth-Gardiner , lead occupational therapist at Tees , Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Trust , and OTalk and AbleOTUK member ; Dai Davies , RCOT professional practice lead – Wales ; Linda Hindle , deputy chief allied health professions officer for England ; Sheherazad Kapadia , student occupational therapist at London South Bank University and member of the BAMEOT UK network ; Karin Orman , RCOT assistant director – professional practice ; and Hannah Spencer , occupational therapist and mental health practitioner for the NHS , and LGBTQIA + OT UK member .
Questions flooded in from the audience and key issues raised included the barriers people face to accessing healthcare , what occupational therapists working in the higher education sector can do to increase awareness of our professional role in reducing health inequalities , and whether we should be prioritising poverty itself , as an identifying factor , as we might a particular demographic or condition .
Karin was the first to address where RCOT sits currently in terms of addressing health equity , saying we are at the ‘ awareness ’ stage of the Public Health England and the King ’ s Fund framework , which talks of ‘ awareness , action and advocacy ’. She urged people to use Occupational Therapy Week as an opportunity to have wider conversations around health equity .
Quote of the month
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the increase in health inequalities across the UK . Whilst in theory , everyone in the UK has the same access to healthcare , in reality the causes of ill health are very different depending on where you live , your socio-economic class and your ethnicity .
Professor Diane Cox , RCOT chair of council
Hannah moved on to discuss the barriers that people from the LBTGQIA + community face in accessing healthcare full stop , regardless of whether this is in mental health , physical health or social care . They said that fundamentally the issue is about ‘ the little nuanced things that we can all do on a day-to-day basis to make that access easier ’.
14 OTnews November 2021