Dr Diwakar provides clinical leadership to London’s health system, focusing on delivering the NHS's national and regional strategies. He was one of the Senior Responsible Officers who developed proposals for the NHS Long Term Plan, on prevention and health inequalities. He is leading the development of the clinical strategy for London. He and his team are the clinical leaders for urgent, integrated and emergency care, primary care, prevention and reducing inequalities, and improving cancer outcomes.

Dr Diwakar visited Mid and South Essex on Tuesday 31 Jan and was greeted by Stephanie Dawe, CEO at Provide Health and part of the leadership team for The Mid and South Essex Community Collaborative, and Ronan Fenton, Medical Director for The Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System.  Met by Alex Lambert, who works for the Mid and South Essex Community Collaborative All Aged Long Covid Team, Dr Diwakar was shown around the community respiratory van and informed how services are being taken to communities and people who find it difficult to otherwise access the service.  Alex said: “The van has been such an amazing benefit to communities, who can gain a better understanding of respiratory issues, including the signs and symptoms of Long Covid and how to be referred into the service for treatment. It has had such a positive impact on people.”  Dr Diwakar said,  "The work that colleagues in mid and south Essex are doing with the respiratory van has considerable potential to reduce health inequalities based on the data driven approach to population health.”

The van had previously been used to bring COVID-19 vaccinations into the community in mid and south Essex.

Dr Vin Diwakar also heard about all the fantastic work of the Mid and South Essex ICS Virtual Hospital which includes, MSEFT Hospital @Home service, Mid and South Essex Community Collaborative (MSECC)  virtual wards and the Urgent Community Response Team (UCRT), which are leading the region for the number of calls they are picking up from the East of England Ambulance Service call stack. From 15 December 2022 to 10 January 2023, Mid and South Essex UCRT reviewed 592 calls from the ambulance stack (the highest number of calls reviewed by any regional team during this period), and accepted 346 (58.45%) of these calls as being suitable to be picked up by a UCRT clinician (the highest number picked up from the stack by any team in the region).

Data also shows that our response times to pick up these calls are some of the highest regionally, meaning that local patients are getting the benefits of being supported by UCRT and relieving pressure on ambulance service resources by taking clinically appropriate patients from the stack.