Preventative Spend

Cliciwch yma am y Gymraeg

Why Spending Money to Keep People Healthy is Important

Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council (RCTCBC) want to make sure everyone stays healthy and happy. RCTCBC believe that spending money now on preventative services can help people stay healthy and improve their lives. These services can support individuals and communities, and either stop problems from happening later down the line, or at least reduce their impact. Investing in keeping people happy and healthy from the start, instead of fixing problems as they happen will make a big difference for everyone.

What the RCT Health Determinants Research Collaboration Will Do

We are trying to understand how spending money now can prevent problems later. We will look at different types of information, like expert opinions, people's experiences, data and statistics, impact measurements, and academic research to:

• Define preventative spend
• Identify preventative services within the Council, what problems they prevent and in what ways
• Find out how spending money on these services affects the lives of residents and communities in RCT
• Create a method to examine areas where the council spends on prevention
• Help with efforts to gather more evidence and measure results

How we will do this

To make sure we spend money in the best way to prevent problems, we have a 3-step plan:

Step 1: Define and Map Preventative Spend First, we will explain what we mean by different types of preventative spending:

• Primary prevention: Stopping problems before they start by helping whole communities.
• Secondary prevention: Finding and fixing problems early before they get worse.
• Tertiary prevention: Reducing the impact of problems that have already happened.
• Foundational prevention: The infrastructure which enables people to live healthy lives and improve their wellbeing.

We will create teams to gather lots of evidence, like expert opinions, people's experiences, and data. This will help us see how spending money affects residents and communities. We will write a report and help with efforts to get funding for further research if needed. We will gather 'lived experience' from the community by working with a small group of citizens and partner organisations. If you live, work, play or study in RCT you can also get involved by completing our poll on the top right of this page, or contact us to find out more!

This will help us understand and focus on the most important areas.

Step 2: Gather Evidence and Plan Next Steps Next, we will collect information about the areas we want to focus on. This includes data from the Council, staff, and other sources. We will look at how well these areas prevent problems and discuss what to do next.

Step 3: Create a Reusable Method Finally, we will make a template that the Council can use for other services. This will be like an instruction booklet, showing how to collect evidence and assess preventative spending in a clear and consistent way.

You can check out our other projects or contact us for more information.