Dear Colleagues For your information I enclose press release of the UK govt's response to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health's Public Health report, which deals heavily with health inequalities and includes information on a national consultation on ways of implementing health inequalities targets. I dont think this has been published yet, but if anyone knows different please let me know. The full govt response can be downloaded from http://www.doh.gov.uk/phreport2.htm David David McDaid LSE Health and Social Care London School of Economics and Political Science Government Response to the House of Commons Select Committee on Health's Second Report on Public Health Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Health By Command of Her Majesty July 2001 1. The Government welcomes the Committee's report on public health and its overall endorsement of existing policies for improving health and reducing health inequalities, set out most recently in "The NHS Plan." In particular it welcomes the Committee's acceptance that within Government responsibility for public health should remain within the Department of Health (DH). 2. As the Prime Minister said recently, the General Election result has given the Government a strong mandate for reform and an instruction to deliver modernised public services that will make an appreciable difference to the quality of people's lives and life opportunities. 3. At the heart of modernised public services there needs to be a common sense of purpose. Within public health there is a clear consensus about the focus on: the protection of the public's health; health promotion and disease prevention programmes;and reductions in health inequalities. 4. On the last point, the Government has reaffirmed its determination to tackle disadvantage in all its forms. A key element of that commitment will be the delivery of the specific national targets, announced in February, for reducing inequalities in health. The Inequalities and Public Health Task Force established last autumn will be responsible for overseeing implementation of the strategy for reducing health inequalities. 5. As the Committee acknowledged in its report, as part of that programme it is essential to address the underlying determinants - what Acheson calls the "upstream" factors. The Government has already made substantial progress in this area. Furthermore, since the Committee reported - and following the recent General Election - the Government has announced that health inequalities will be the subject of a cross-Government spending review. That will significantly strengthen co-ordination of policies to address the range of "upstream" determinants of poor health. 6. To inform the spending review, and to ensure effective delivery of the health inequality targets at local level, we are launching a nationwide consultation on the measures needed to implement those targets. The Department of Health is publishing a health inequalities consultation paper on spreading best practice and the main measures needed to narrow the health gap. The Department will be consulting key stakeholders, particularly local government, the voluntary sector, other agencies and community groups to draw up an implementation plan. Particularly important will be establishing the critical role of the new Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in addressing health inequalities in this area. 7. The roles for PCTs, Strategic Health Authorities (see para 10 below) and regional public health functions set out in this document flow from the Secretary of State for Health's speech on "Shifting The Balance of Power" on 25 April 2001. A discussion document will be published on the emerging views about the implications for the NHS of the Secretary of State's speech. A consultation exercise will be held in the Autumn on the boundaries for Strategic Health Authorities. 8. The public health delivery system will be enhanced additionally as a result of the significant shift in the balance of power within the NHS announced by the Secretary of State for Health in May. More power will be put in the hands of front-line staff and organisations in order to make the health service more patient-centred. Primary Care Trusts are best placed to deliver change at local level. They have the best knowledge and information about local health needs, and they have responsibility for providing services - smoking cessation, healthy diets etc. - essential to the achievement of the targets. For the first time, there will be a public health team in each PCT with a Board level appointment to lead this work. 9. Primary Care Trusts - the organisations closest to the concerns and aspirations of patients and clinicians - will in future be the prime interface between the local community and the NHS, and will lead the latter's contribution to joint working with local Government. In particular they will become the focus for delivery of public health programmes and the wider objectives for social and economic regeneration. Primary Care Trusts will work as part of Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) to ensure co-ordination of planning and community engagement, integration of service delivery and input to the wider Government agenda. 10. Around 30 new Strategic Health Authorities will replace the existing 95 Health Authorities (HAs). Each Strategic Health Authority will have its own Director of Public Health (DPH) who will create and develop a public health network and manage the local performance of PCTs and NHS Trusts in delivering public health goals and reducing inequalities. 11. At the same time, the Regional Offices of the Department of Health will be abolished by 2003. Four new Regional Directors of Health and Social Care will oversee the development of local services and provide the link between the NHS and DH. Regional Directors of Public Health (RsDPH) will lead a single, integrated public health function for the region, which will be located in each of the nine Regional Offices of Government (GOs). It will develop multi-sectoral approaches across Government and with other partners to tackling the wider determinants of health, for example through regional work on economic regeneration, education, employment and transport, and through contributing to the over-arching strategic regional sustainable development frameworks. 12. As well as a common sense of purpose, modernised public services also need to have clear delivery systems, and "Shifting the Balance of Power" provides an opportunity to make public health services clearer and more consistent. The Committee itself acknowledged that this had not been sufficiently the case in the past, although the establishment of the Health Development Agency (HDA) and a network of regional Public Health Observatories (PHOs) have helped to strengthen the evidence base and the quality of information that informs public health interventions. The report of the "Chief Medical Officer's Project to Strengthen the Public Health Function," issued on 28 March 2001, has advocated the development of a multi-disciplinary workforce for public health, with improved training and development capacity, and those changes should also improve the quality and consistency of services. 13. The Government is determined to bear down on the big killers and the main determinants of ill-health. The prevention of coronary heart disease and cancer is core to the Government's work on reducing health inequalities. By tackling the major risk factors for these chronic diseases, such as smoking, physical inactivity and poor diet, early deaths can be reduced. Recognising the links between diet and later disease, "The NHS Plan" highlights these as key areas for action. The five-a-day programme aims at increasing access to fruit and vegetables and one of the key elements of this approach is the National School Fruit Scheme. "The NHS Plan" also reinforced the Government's strategy for tackling smoking set out in "Smoking Kills" and set out measures to tackle smoking including setting up world-leading smoking cessation services. "The NHS Cancer Plan" which followed placed increasing emphasis on the need to address inequalities and focus activity on harder to reach smokers. It is recognised that the greatest impact on reducing health inequalities that stem from smoking will be the activities of smoking cessation services, and following an investment of £50m over three years they are now up and running and achieving their targets. Other measures such as our education and media campaigns are designed to help shift attitudes and change behaviour. 14. With these changes the Government believes it has laid the foundations not only for a modernised health service but for a modern public health service too - one which will lay a greater emphasis on the protection and improvement of the population's health, and which will at last start to reduce the widening gap between the best and worst off in society.