Longer and healthier lives to be the focus of Public Health England

Public Health England

Public Health England (PHE) – a new national body covering the Greater Manchester area - will be working to help people live longer, healthier lives.

PHE is a new national body, an executive agency of the Department of Health, which took up its full responsibilities on 1 April, 2013.

As part of the wider system changes across the health service, PHE will be supporting and enabling local government, the NHS and the public to protect and improve health and wellbeing and reduce inequalities.

The new organisation has taken on the responsibilities of a number of existing bodies which were abolished on 31 March 2013. They include the Health Protection Agency, the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse, the nine Public Health Observatories, the UK National Screening Committee and NHS cancer and non-cancer screening programmes, the Cancer Registries, Quality Assurance Reference Centres, public health functions from Strategic Health Authorities, Specialised Commissioners and parts of the Department of Health, including Public Health Marketing.

The setting up of Public Health England comes alongside the move of local Directors of Public Health and their teams from NHS Primary Care Trusts, also being abolished, into local councils, who will take the lead in the future for public health.

PHE will support local government in that task by operating a nationwide, integrated service through a network of over 5,000 staff, who will be providing advice, expertise and information to help people protect their health from threats, like infectious diseases and work out how to improve their health so they stay fitter for longer.
As well as national centres of particular expertise, PHE will have four regions – North, Midlands and East, London and South – and 15 centres around the country – including a centre in Greater Manchester.

The centres will be the front door of PHE and will be responsible for making sure that all the organisation’s services and expertise are focused on local needs. Each centre will have a director and teams of specialist staff and will work with local government, the new Clinical Commissioning Groups and NHS England and the wider NHS, to tailor PHE’s services to their local wishes and needs.

The four regions, meanwhile, will be keeping an overview of the whole health system’s progress, in their area, at implementing the new national public health outcomes framework – which sets out what needs to be achieved nationally to protect and improve health.

Professor Martyn Regan, who has been appointed Centre Director for the Greater Manchester PHE Centre, said PHE would be using the public health outcomes framework to measure health for the next three years, and would help bring about fundamental improvements in health and wellbeing, by focusing its energies on five key priorities:

• Helping people to live longer by reducing preventable deaths from conditions such as heart disease, stroke, cancer and liver disease 
• Increasing healthy life expectancy by tackling conditions which place a burden on many lives, such as anxiety, depression and back pain 
• Protecting the population from infectious diseases and environmental hazards, including emerging risks and the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance 
• Supporting families to give children the best start in life, through working with health visitors, Family Nurse Partnerships and the Troubled Families Programme
• Helping employers to facilitate and encourage their staff to make healthy choices

Professor Regan said: “For the first time in 40 years local authorities will have a legal responsibility for improving the health of their communities. Local government is the natural leader for this task – they will be able to place health and wellbeing in the wider context of the local economy, housing, leisure, education, crime and community resilience, and have the skills, knowledge and passion to provide public health services designed for the needs of their local population.

“PHE’s role will be to encourage and inspire. We will provide the professional advice, knowledge and evidence, to support local government and the NHS and to help people to make healthier choices.

“We know that smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, physical inactivity and alcohol are five main risk factors for ill-health and many of the major causes of premature death. Poor mental health, substance abuse and musculoskeletal disorders such as back pain, are among the main drivers for disability. The reality is that nearly all of these conditions are either preventable or can have less of an impact when diagnosed early. PHE has the opportunity to make a substantial difference to people’s lives, and reduce the tremendous psycho-social and economic burden of poor health on our society.

“The creation of PHE and the movement of public health into local authorities are huge transformational opportunities for improving the public’s health, and there could be no better time to do things differently. PHE is in a unique position in that it can take a wide overview of public health and the causes of ill health. We will work alongside local authorities and the NHS to ensure national and local resources are directed towards the areas where attention is needed most and the biggest improvements can be made to meet the needs of our demographically changing population."