- Home
- Our societal impact
- Our focus areas
- Global health equity
Global Health Equity
One of the biggest challenges we are committed to addressing is advancing global health equity. Put simply, health equity is the idea that there shouldn’t be such large differences in health outcomes between different places and people. Health equity would be achieved when there are no longer unfair, avoidable differences in health status among groups of people, when everyone can attain their full potential for health and wellbeing.
We believe if we address the challenges facing health workers, we will improve healthcare for everyone. To accomplish this, we engage stakeholders and collaborators to support education and leadership programs, make investments in new models of care and advocate for systemic change.
To help boost capacity among clinical staff in the UK to engage in preventive mental healthcare, Mental Health UK proposed the Mental Health Navigation model as a cost-effective, person-centred approach to mental healthcare. The three-year Community Mental Health Navigator pilot program was launched in 2020, with support from J&J UK and the Johnson & Johnson Foundation to address the non-clinical needs of people experiencing mental illness. With the aim of reducing demand on the capacity of general practitioners, mental health nurses and other care professionals, four navigators were initially funded, and this expanded to 16 during the pilot, reaching almost 5,000 patients. The program has been further expanded with funding from the UK National Health Service, and now approximately 40 navigators are operating in the UK with plans to embed a navigator in primary care networks across the country.