Dorset Place covers the same footprint as Dorset Council and serves a population of just over 380,000. It has nine Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INTs) aligned to Primary Care Network areas. The area has the highest proportion of residents aged 65 and over of any unitary authority in England, with 29.5% of the population in this age group. Its mix of coastal and rural communities presents challenges around transport and access to services. Dorset also experiences pockets of significant deprivation, with 11 neighbourhoods in the top 20% most deprived nationally—10 of which are in Weymouth and Portland—resulting in marked inequalities in quality of life and life expectancy.
Coproduction is central to Dorset’s neighbourhood health approach, ensuring lived experience and community insight shape service design. The Dorset Intelligence & Insight Service (DiiS) provides systemwide population health analytics, enabling proactive identification and support for people at high risk or with complex needs.
Over the past 12–18 months, INTs have focused on frailty and high intensity users of multiple services. More recently and aligned to the NNHIP a focus on interventions for those that are moderately or severely frail and at high risk of falls has been agreed as the priority cohort. Interventions are likely to include proactive, personalised care-planning, polypharmacy review and medicines optimisation and care co-ordination/navigation. Several neighbourhoods are also expanding work on children’s healthy weight, women’s health and mental health, particularly in deprived areas.
