People's experience of Long Covid in North Central London
Download (PDF 13.83 MB)Summary of report content
Healthwatch Barnet, Healthwatch Camden, Healthwatch Enfield, Healthwatch Haringey and Healthwatch Islington agreed in the summer of 2021 to work in partnership on a joint North Central London Long COVID project.
The core aims of this project were:
- To capture local people’s experiences of Long COVID in order to identify any gaps in current provisions.
- To support the better development of services and systems to help local people to manage their symptoms.
To gather insight on local NCL residents’ experiences of living with Long COVID, an anonymous online survey, 1-2-1 interviews and community focus groups were used. Survey respondents had the option to participate in a follow-up 1-2- 1 interview.
The survey covered the impact of Long COVID on patients’ lives, their physical and mental health, access to NHS treatment, experience with healthcare professionals and suggestions for improvement. Subsequent 1-2-1 interviews and focus groups loosely followed a similar structure of questions. In total, they gathered 300 local peoples’ experiences of Long COVID across North Central London.
This report discusses the impact of Long COVID on physical health, mental health and wellbeing, employment and job security and daily living. It also discusses people’s experiences accessing Long COVID support, including working with GPs.
This report makes a number of recommendations to improve people’s experiences of Long COVID support.