A Shared Responsibility: Tackling Inequalities in Health Across Greater Manchester

Oglesby Charitable Trust Report

In March 2013 the Oglesby Charitable Trust (OCT) published Tackling Inequalities in Health Outcomes in Greater Manchester. The report outlined the marked differences in life expectancy and wellbeing for poorer communities across the city region, and demonstrated that a new approach is needed to achieve a radical improvement in outcomes.

The main messages of the Trust’s 2013 report included the need for greater levels of individual ownership and personal responsibility for health. It also set out the wider social and economic consequences of ill-health and illustrated how inequalities threaten to limit Greater Manchester’s future prosperity as a whole.
 This second report, based on extensive research and analysis, addresses a critical question posed in the first report: how can the people of Manchester be encouraged to take greater ownership for their health outcomes? If lifestyle and behavioural choices are critical factors driving present and future health outcomes, then this is a key question – one brought sharply into focus by NHS Chief Executive Simon Stevens’ call to reinvent health as a ‘social movement’ with personal responsibility at its heart.