What is a JSNA?
A Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) provides an assessment of the current and future health and social care needs of the population. It is not just about illness, but also looks at wider factors that we know can influence how healthy we are such as how many of us smoke, what jobs we do and what housing we live in. These are known as the wider determinants of health.
Developed in collaboration between different Civil Service and Government departments, the Gibraltar Health Authority, UK Health Security Agency and charities, the JSNA is a dynamic process that will evolve over time.
What will the JSNA explore?
The JSNA will look broadly across a range of areas known as ‘health assets’. These assets can be described as the collective resources that are available to individuals and communities to protect against negative health outcomes and promote health status.
These assets though may not always be consciously thought about or used by people. By exploring these however, the JSNA helps highlight the values and skills, knowledge, connections and potential in a community.
Assets like these have the potential to enhance both the quality and longevity of life. The JSNA will help identify protective factors that support health and wellbeing through resources that promote the self-esteem and coping abilities of individuals and communities.
The emphasis is on the achieving a balance between meeting needs and nurturing the strengths and resources of people and communities that already exist. It is not about seeking a replacement for investing in service improvement or attempting to address the structural causes of health inequalities.
We have significant community assets here in Gibraltar that make a considerable beneficial contribution to the way we live our lives. It is one of our key strengths and it is important we capture these assets in the JSNA to help strengthen capacity, connectedness and social capital.
Why are we doing this now?
A JSNA is an opportunity for a two-way conversation between Gibraltarians and their Health Authority. It will not provide all the answers, but it will generate discussions and development of priorities intended to improve the health and wellbeing and reduce inequalities.
It will raise questions such as:
- Why has the number of births per woman reducing and what does this mean for the Department of Education in terms of the number of school places that may be required in the future?
- We have increasing numbers of people living with obesity, which can be a reversible cause of type 2 diabetes. What are the implications for services that the GHA may need to provide in the future such as diabetic eye screening?
Your feedback is an important part of the process and vital to understanding our population health needs. So your questions and comments are very welcome and we’d really like to hear your contributions to the JSNA, which you can share with us at (insert email address perhaps health promotion?).
What will we do with the findings?
Overall the JSNA will help inform future service planning and new services to support us to live healthier, happier lives. It will underpin and inform a public health strategy for Gibraltar, comprising three pillars:
- Primary prevention to try and prevent illness in the first place – for eg promoting eating healthy food and exercising to maintain a healthy body weight to help prevent people developing type 2 diabetes
- Secondary prevention to detect illnesses at an early stage when they can usually be more effectively – for eg screening programmes
- Tertiary prevention to reduce the severity and impact of an established disease – for eg. cardiac rehabilitation after a heart attack.
We are starting in 2023 with a few, key health priorities already identified, along with describing fundamental aspects of our population such as births and deaths. As new data, information and analysis become available, these pages will be updated.
