Life expectancy in Luton is decreasing - according to new figures

“The gap isn’t closing between male and female rates,” warned Luton Borough Council’s director of public health Sally Cartwright.

Presenting the annual public health report to a full council meeting, she said: “That’s one of those measures where everyone’s work will gradually make a difference.

“There’s a decrease in life expectancy for both males and females, reflecting the picture nationally and compared to similar areas based on population demographics, such as Slough.

“Under 75 mortality from all causes considered preventable isn’t going in the right direction either. This has increased since the last set of data. There’s more work we need to do in this space.

“There’s a decrease between 2021 and 2022 for hospital admissions because of self-harm, which is positive as we’re lower than the east of England average.

The department’s aim is “to galvanise action across the system on health inequalities, which are unfair and avoidable differences across communities and between different groups within society”, according to Ms Cartwright.

“It can affect life expectancy and the care that’s open to those communities,” she explained. “We’ve started to say a health equity town, instead of a Marmot town, because that’s more meaningful from our evaluation work.

“We started working with the Sir Michael Marmot team in 2022. This report is a refresh of where we’ve got to and highlights future plans.

“Family hubs have opened now and we’ve seen 15 outreach sites delivering family health services across the town.”

Liberal Democrat Stopsley councillor described himself as “a great fan of the public health work being done in the borough”, saying: “It’s an example of excellent work.

“Is there no reference to the issues around dental health in the borough?” he asked.

Ms Cartwright replied: “The only reference concerns work public health has been leading around oral health outreach for children and young people.

“We’ve arranged work on supervised toothbrushing and oral health pop-ups to help families access dentistry that haven’t been registered during the pandemic.

“We distributed 14,000 toothbrushes and toothpaste packs through that work last year. We’ve really poor oral health in our under fives. So it’s important we’re getting toothbrushes and toothpaste out to people in the community.

“Much of the dental work is led by BLMK integrated care board (ICB) and it makes contact with dentists. There’s only so much from our perspective we can do. We realise it’s an issue we need to be tackling as a system.”

Labour Beech Hill councillor Javed Hussain wondered why there was no mention of organ donation, especially as a motion was put to full council on the subject earlier this year.

Ms Cartwright labelled it “an important issue”, saying: “There’s reference to stem cell donor recruitment and ‘know your blood group’ work we’re doing with the University of Bedfordshire and the Luton Swab Week.

“We’ve been working in that area, although it’s often not led by us. But we’ll support other people’s campaigns and work programmes in that space.”