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NHS Greater Manchester continues to make strong progress in improving services and outcomes across the region, with our national rankings rising in several key areas.
Cancer care is improving, with 77.2% of patients starting treatment within 28 days — up from 74.7% — moving GM from 21st to 14th nationally. Diagnostic wait times are also down, with GM now ranked 7th (up from 19th), and only four patients waited over 78 weeks for treatment in April 2025, improving our ranking from 32nd to 21st.
Category 2 ambulance calls averaged 20 minutes 27 seconds in May — well below the 30-minute target and better than the national average. Dementia diagnosis has reached 74.3%, placing GM second highest nationally, well above the 66.7% target.
Smoking in pregnancy is at 5.9% — a 50% drop since 2018 — and 70% of people with severe mental illness received a full physical health check, beating the 60% national target in every locality.
Other achievements include: 238 thrombectomies performed, over 65% of high-risk patients receiving lipid-lowering therapy, and a 67.5% blood pressure control rate — the highest in the North West.
Together, we’re building a healthier Greater Manchester.
Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust welcomes new Chief Nursing Officer
Juliette Cosgrove has been appointed as NCA’s new chief nursing officer for the next 12 months. She has nearly 40 years’ experience working in healthcare. Juliette will be joined in July by a new deputy chief nurse Katie Robinson. Katie will join the NCA from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust where she works as an associate chief nurse. Read more about Juliette and Katie here.
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Recognising excellence: Lorna receives CIO Legend Award
Lorna Allan, Northern Care Alliance chief digital and information officer, has been presented with a legend award for her work in digital.
The UK edition of the World CIO 200 Summit is a platform for celebrating the achievements and vision of chief information officers (CIOs) and saw Lorna join a group of the most influential digital leaders across the country.
Lorna said: “It is incredible for me to be recognised alongside such digital champions when it comes to digital. We are professionals in an area that continues to evolve rapidly and we need to be leaders when it comes to the digital future.”
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On Thursday 5 June, local communities, leaders and special guests, including Mayor Andy Burnham, joined the BIG GM Live Well Bus Tour, highlighting the amazing work of local community organisations across the city region, and the crucial role they play in shaping a happier, healthier and fairer future.
The tour led by GM Live Well, local trusts, localities, and the We’re Right Here campaign for community power, showcased pioneering community-led spaces in Greater Manchester, to support the development of Live Well centres and spaces, which have just received £10 million investment from GMCA and NHS GM to tackle health, social and economic inequalities.
Grounded in the learning from Big Local and the We’re Right Here campaign, insights from the tour will inform the future development of the Live Well project and ultimately shape how Greater Manchester can become a pioneer in growing community-led approaches in local decision-making nationally.
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NHS GM, Chief Executive, Mark Fisher, visited the Manchester Plymouth Grove Blood Donor Centre and is urging anyone who is eligible in GM to donate blood amid critically low levels of O Negative blood. The visit came about in support of National Blood Week back in June.
Blood donations are vital to the whole of the NHS to help them save lives, but unfortunately, despite the hard work of donation teams, a combination of factors have meant this crucial blood type is under particular pressure. Mark met up with Carol, a donor care supervisor on the day and talked him through how easy it is to donate and what to expect on the day. You can watch the film here.
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Manchester’s Inward Investment Agency, MIDAS, has launched a new life sciences prospectus showcasing the city-region's position as one of the UK's most dynamic health innovation ecosystems.
The prospectus, Investing in Life Sciences in Manchester outlines the region’s strengths and why it is the perfect place for businesses to invest in their future innovation and growth. Manchester is fast becoming a leading UK hub for life sciences and healthcare innovation, driven by strengths in data, genomics, and clinical trials. Backed by the Government’s Modern Industrial Strategy, the city is set to improve patient access to new treatments and lead NHS innovation.
A major investment by global research firm IQVIA into the Medicines Evaluation Unit at Wythenshawe Hospital will expand early-phase clinical trials, helping bring breakthrough therapies to patients faster. This builds on Greater Manchester’s strong healthcare ecosystem and its role in national research and innovation initiatives.
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Data for April 2025 was published at the end of June and showed that 842,333 children and young people have accessed NHS funded mental health services since 2019, an increase of 64% and exceeding the target by over 2k.
Expanding access to children and young people means they can receive the support they need now and will improve both their outcomes and their life chances into the future.
In Greater Manchester, this progress is particularly encouraging. Our access continues to exceed targets and grow as we transform and develop services across the system. A key strength of our approach lies in our collaborative system offer, which brings together NHS services, local authorities, education, and importantly our strong Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise sector. This partnership model enables us to provide responsive, inclusive, and accessible support that truly meets the needs of children, young people, and their families.
We also recognise that there is still a long way to go. Improving outcomes for all children and young people remains a significant and complex challenge, which is precisely why the partnerships we have built are so vital to driving sustained, meaningful change.
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The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has again rated services for children and young people at Tameside and Glossop NHS Foundation Trust as good, following an inspection in January. Our services for children and young people include a dedicated children and young people’s emergency department and paediatric outpatient department, a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and a children’s unit that includes paediatric day surgery and an observation and assessment area. We also provide children’s community nursing services.
New figures reveal the number of women in Greater Manchester smoking during pregnancy has fallen for the seventh consecutive year. According to NHS England, fewer than six in 100 women in Greater Manchester smoked during pregnancy between April 2024 to March 2025 – achieving NHS England’s national target.
In Greater Manchester as a whole, only 5.9% of women now smoke at the time of delivery – a drop from around 13% in 2018 and almost 1,000 babies born smokefree in the last year alone. With a drop across almost all localities and, in the last year, in Manchester and Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, in particular.
This 1.8 percentage point decrease from 7.7% (around 7 in 100 pregnant women) in 2023-24 brings Greater Manchester to below the England average of 6.1% and achieved the national ambition set by NHS England of 6% or less.
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A new suite of films has launched in Greater Manchester to help autistic women and women with a learning disability access life-saving cervical cancer screening.
Believed to be the first of their kind in the UK, the films were created by and for women with lived experience.
They aim to improve understanding reduce barriers, and support informed choices around screening and the HPV vaccine. The project brought together experts from the NHS, education, and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector.
Leeanne McKew, 32, from Tameside is a member of People First Tameside and one of the women who developed and starred in the films. She said: “I think the films will be really helpful for women who are unsure about screening. Having information helps reduce anxiety.
If we can get it right for autistic people and those with a learning disability, we can get it right for everyone. If people want to change the story, they need to listen to us, so projects like this are really important.”
The films are available here and are being shared widely with professionals and organisations.
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Every locality across Greater Manchester achieved above the national 60% target, reflecting a strong collective effort across primary care, mental health, and community services to tackle health inequalities and improve outcomes for people with Serious Mental Illness (SMI).
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The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has published its monthly update on measles cases in England, which shows outbreaks continuing this year. In Greater Manchester cases have predominantly been in unvaccinated children aged 10 years and under.
There has also been a global increase in measles cases including Europe over the last year and the Agency is concerned that with people travelling for holidays or to visit family this summer, there is a risk this could lead to another surge of measles cases in England.
We would like your support to socialise important messages around measles, the signs and symptoms and how and where to get vaccinated and its importance to try and prevent further outbreaks. All of the assets are available to download from our campaigns resource centre.
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The hot weather has arrived and the GM Ageing Hub and GM Resilience Forum have consulted older adults across GM, and organisations that work with older adults, to create a guide for organisations to support older people during periods of extreme heat. The guide aims to support organisations to better communicate the risks to older adults that are associated with warm temperatures and provides information around practical actions that organisations can take to support and communicate with older adults during heatwaves.
The guide provides background information around why communicating risk and safety guidance to older adults matters, what older people told us about communicating heat safety messaging to them, and what you can do as an organisation to support older adults during heatwaves.
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Back in December 2023 and January 2024, the NHS GM Population Health team, in partnership with local Authority public health colleagues, led the most significant piece of public engagement ever undertaken in GM around childhood obesity "The Real Picture".
The campaign won one of only four Gold awards at the prestigious Lisbon Health Awards - with The Weigh In video, which formed part of their submission and summarized the engagement and approach that was taken.
We heard from more than 2,500 people during the eight-week consultation to improve adults ADHD services, which closed on 17 June.
The consultation was about two potential options for improving access to services and support. NHS Greater Manchester heard from people online and face to face with 50 pop-up stalls and focus groups across the city region.
The next stage is to analyse the feedback and provide a report and set of recommendations to commissioners to help inform the future of adult ADHD services in Greater Manchester.
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NHS GM IVF cycles consultation is now live
We are inviting the public to have their say on proposed changes to the number of NHS-funded In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) cycles offered across Greater Manchester.
Currently, the number of IVF cycles offered to eligible women aged 39 and under varies depending on where their GP practice is in Greater Manchester.
This means that women living only a few miles apart may be offered a different number of cycles, from one cycle to two or three cycles. This inconsistency stems from historic commissioning arrangements. Now, as the organisation responsible for NHS services across the city region, NHS Greater Manchester is reviewing this to ensure a consistent and fair approach for everyone, regardless of where they live.
What are we proposing?
We are asking people what they think about our proposal to offer “1+” IVF treatment:
- One full NHS-funded cycle of IVF
- Plus a second attempt if the first is cancelled or abandoned
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