About Us

Background

The Belfast Health Development Unit (BHDU) is made up of staff from Belfast City Council, Public Health Agency and Belfast Health and Social Care Trust. It was established by the Chief Executives of these organisations and officially launched by the Minister for Health, in March 2010.

The establishment of BHDU followed a review and re-structuring of health services across Northern Ireland, where it was recognised that closer working relationships between health, local authorities and partner agencies, had a significant role to play in addressing health inequalities.

Initially BHDU’s role was to provide support to Belfast Strategic Partnership, whose aim was to address life inequalities.  More recently the team has transitioned its work to focus on health inequalities within the Belfast Agenda (Belfast’s Community Plan).

Current Work

Work carried out by BHDU includes:

• The establishment of and continuous support to a wide range of working groups
• The development of integrated strategies and plans, which incorporate agreed collective actions and contributions from various organisations across the city
• The creation of new evidence and research on key issues which impact on inequalities
• The establishment of a series of grant funded programmes to support local communities to test solutions to the difficult challenges they face.

Our focus is on prevention and early and secondary intervention for the whole population, working to improve outcomes across a wide range of health determinants such as physical and mental health and wellbeing, nutrition, social connections, learning and healthy ageing.  We work with partners to deliver actions linked to these key themes:

• Active Belfast
• Wellbeing and Resilience
• Alcohol and drugs
• Age Friendly Belfast

For more information on the work of Belfast Learning City, please click here.