Accessing Healthcare in Cambridge
March 2022
In December 2021, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities granted £22.5 million to areas with low vaccine uptake. The Cambridge City Council commissioned CCVS to co-design and manage a community engagement scheme to provide neutral and safe spaces for people to discuss their feelings on the vaccines and to make sense of the pandemic.
Identifying barriers to health access
Over the course of this programme, it became more and more apparent that low vaccine uptake was linked to barriers to health access from needing childcare to attend an appointment to being physically unable to access a vaccination centre.
In the final stage of the programme, the City Council commissioned this research to investigate the extent of health inequalities in Cambridge.
The aim was to map local communities to understand what the issues were with local access to health services. There is no doubt that the pandemic exacerbated barriers to accessing health care across the United Kingdom. However, the pandemic did not create these health inequalities.
Research aims and focus
The aim of this research was to “increase opportunities for health equality in Cambridge so that more people enjoy a good quality of life and can access better healthcare choices that are right for them”.
We wanted to particularly engage “seldom heard groups” who are often underrepresented in this type of research and less likely to be heard by decision-makers. This includes (but is not limited to):
- Particular ethnic minority groups
- People with disabilities
- Refugees and asylum seekers
- Members of the LGBT+ community
- People who are homeless
- People with language barriers
Working across the CCVS Engagement Team and the CECF Health Champions network, we used community spaces and buildings to engage seldom-heard groups with our research survey.
The research builds on the important and comprehensive work of Healthwatch Cambridgeshire on health inequalities in South Cambridgeshire. We will present key findings from our research and recommendations for building a health equalities partnership for Cambridge.
