Let's talk about health

Healthwatch Wakefield are supporting the Wakefield Health and Wellbeing Board to better understand how people define a healthy life and the barriers to achieving better health. The board consists of local service leaders who make decisions about health and care services.

Healthwatch Wakefield ran two surveys. The first focused on individual feedback and ran between 11 August and 17 October 2021. It was completed by 247 people. A second survey focused on representatives and Healthwatch Wakefield facilitated a focus group discussion at a Third Sector Leader’s meeting.

Key findings

• There did not seem to be a correlation between ratings of health, for example rating physical health as ‘very poor’ did not seem to make it more likely that mental health and emotional health would also be rated as ‘very poor’.
• Those aged 13-17 were most likely to rate their mental health as very poor / poor followed closely by those aged 18-24. Those aged 65-79 were most likely to rate their mental health as ‘excellent’.
• Males were more likely to rate their health as ‘excellent’ than females, this was across physical, mental and emotional health. However, they were also more likely to rate all three as ‘very poor’ than females.
• ‘Living a healthy life’ was most commonly defined as being physically fit and active/able to get our, eating healthily, and feeling happy, well rested and stress free.
• The top three barriers to living a healthy life were lack of time/work, physical health, and mental health.