The use of future scenario thinking for child public health in a local authority

Abstract

Background Socioeconomic, cultural, technological, environment and ecological changes are rapidly transforming how children and young people (CYP) grow up, yet their impacts on CYP are difficult to predict. The traditional ways that Public Health practitioners work may not capture such complex and dynamic change. To address this, Lambeth Council used future scenario thinking. Methods A literature review looked at political, socioeconomic and other ‘transitions’ in the borough. Interviews, focus groups and workshops were held with CYP, parents, carers, local statutory and non-statutory stakeholders about the future for Lambeth CYP in the decade ahead. Themes were analysed to identify which had the potential for the biggest impact or the most uncertainty. Results The main transitions were described, 100 stakeholders interviewed, and five ‘drivers’ of the future were identified: protracted austerity, technological explosion, demographic shift, ‘democratic shake-up‘ and planetary health. From all these data, four future scenarios were developed: ‘communities care for themselves’, ‘collaborating to care for all’, ‘nobody cares’ and ‘who cares?’ Conclusions New insights were gained about promoting more responsibility for, and active participation of CYP. This led to Lambeth’s CYP Plan and the ‘Made in Lambeth’ campaign aiming to enlist the community and business in creating a child-friendly borough.

Public and patient involvement in health data governance (DATAGov): protocol of a people-centred, mixed-methods study on data use and sharing for rare diseases care and research

“…Open access in health data governance. This foresight method was chosen for its potential to facilitate the engagement of patients and the public in the development of health policy at local and national levels [46][47][48][49] and it will be used to incorporate participants' collective expertise into a model for participatory data governance. Survey and interview data will be integrated and combined with extant literature to inform the design of a set of scenarios for involving different stakeholders in collective decision-making processes concerned with health data.…”