Improving health is no longer the sole preserve of the NHS. It is shaped by the jobs we do, the homes we live in, how we travel and the opportunities open to us. These wider determinants of health – the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age – are central to the mission of the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA).
As devolution evolves, health is moving higher up the agenda. The forthcoming English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill will require strategic authorities to ‘have regard to the need to improve health and reduce health inequalities' in exercising their functions. In the West Midlands, that journey is already well advanced.
