About Swindon's JSNA

The Health and Wellbeing Board (HWB) has a statutory responsibility to prepare a Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) for Swindon. The JSNA is not an end in itself, it draws together key themes from available evidence and describes the current and future health and wellbeing needs of the people of Swindon and is the principal workstream to inform the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy (JHWS). The JSNA highlights the importance of local partners working together to improve health and wellbeing and to reduce inequalities. The JSNA:

• Provides a common view of health and care needs for the local community
• Documents current service provision
• Identifies gaps in health and care services, documenting unmet needs
• Provides evidence of effectiveness for different health and care interventions
• Looks at the health of the population, with a focus on behaviours which affect health such as smoking, diet and exercise.
• Identifies health inequalities
• Is concerned with wider social factors that have an impact on people’s health and wellbeing, such as housing, poverty and employment

The main audience for the JSNA are health and social care commissioners who use it to plan services. This includes partnership bodies such as the HWB and One Swindon, commissioning bodies such as Swindon Borough Council and the Bath and North East Somerset (BaNES), Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board (BSW ICB). It can also be used as an evidence base for preparing bids and business cases, by the voluntary and community sector to ensure that community needs and views are represented, by service providers to assist in the future development of their services, and by the public to scrutinise local health and wellbeing information, plans and commissioning recommendations. The JSNA is used to guide strategy and is an integral part of the commissioning cycle.