AQW 50474/22-27

Ms Kellie Armstrong
Alliance Party
Strangford

Tabled Date: 03/07/2026
Answered On Date: 22/07/2026
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Health, following the May 2026 Joseph Rowntree Foundation report Disability and Poverty in Northern Ireland, to detail any steps his Department plans to take to ensure health inequalities are reduced, particularly in deprived communities with higher disability prevalence.

Answer:

I recognise that health inequalities are closely linked to deprivation, poverty and disability, and that people living in the most disadvantaged communities experience poorer health outcomes and lower healthy life expectancy. Disability can arise for a variety of reasons across the life course, and my Department is committed to improving outcomes for all individuals and communities experiencing poorer health.

Making Life Better (MLB) is the Executive’s overarching strategic framework for improving health and addressing health inequalities. MLB was developed based on the evidence that health and wellbeing, and health inequalities, are shaped by many factors including age, family, community, workplace, beliefs and traditions, economics, and physical and social environments.

I have recently endorsed a new MLB Thematic Action Plan that builds on the MLB strategic framework and provides a renewed focus for collaborative action to improve health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities across Northern Ireland. The new Thematic Action Plan has a focus on prevention, early intervention and addressing the wider factors that influence health.

One of the key enablers of the new Thematic Action Plan is to better join up activities to support those experiencing the most extreme health inequalities in our society both within the health service and across other key sectors. This includes deprived communities with higher disability prevalence. In particular, the Plan commits to a place-based approach to addressing health inequalities by applying the learning from the Live Better programme to the Neighbourhood Model of Health and Wellbeing, targeting action towards communities experiencing the greatest levels of deprivation and poor health outcomes.

In addition, one of the key thematic actions is to promote collaborative working to tackle issues that impact on economic inactivity, including supporting good work, healthy workplaces and helping people remain in employment. This should help address the employment barriers that disabled people in Northern Ireland face, as outlined in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report.