Transferring public health to councils has created huge opportunities to improve community wellbeing.
The years of COVID-19 have been tumultuous and devastating, with public health at the centre of measures to tackle the pandemic nationally and locally.
Our admiration for the way public health, wider council colleagues, the NHS and amazing volunteers have worked tirelessly to reduce its impact is unbounded.
As is widely recognised, the pandemic has brought us closer together. We have experienced the value of partnerships, where organisational badges no longer matter.
We must now make this the basis of our future collaboration across systems, places and neighbourhoods.
Whenever there has been time and space, directors of public health and councils have looked to recovery and renewal – to how the impact of COVID-19 on health and wellbeing can be addressed.
There is growing evidence of significant harm to our mental and physical health, particularly for those facing inequalities, and children and young people whose lives and education have been limited.
Despite this, directors of public health and elected members remain relentlessly positive about the potential to make a difference.
We know how work to protect and improve health and wellbeing has expanded greatly since the transfer of public health responsibilities to local councils, and how local councils and partners now provide a comprehensive range of measures across all areas of public health.
Bringing public health back into local government in 2013 was never a ‘drag and drop’ exercise. It was, and continues to be, about improving health for all citizens by building a new and enhanced locally led 21st-century public health system, where innovation is fostered and promoted, accountable to local populations, and supported by the expertise of professionals and key partners.
The transfer remains one of the most significant extensions of local government powers and duties in decades.
It has created huge opportunities for local authorities, with their partners, to make a stronger impact on improving the health of local communities, and helped to rightly reframe public health to a social, rather than medical model of health and wellbeing.
Improved outcomes for citizens must continue to be the focus for any future plans for public health reform and we must ensure we build on the strong foundations we have.
Since 2013, councils have generated many innovations in commissioning and delivery: a clearer focus on prevention in tobacco control, not just treatment; reshaping the health visiting and school nursing strategies to respond better to local needs; and remodelling sexual health provision to improve access and focus on prevention.
As we move to a phase of COVID-19 recovery, the task ahead will not be easy, but we are building on 10 successful years of public health in local government and strong collaboration with key partners.
As public health and councils grow together, policies develop and opportunities emerge.
When partnerships choose a manageable number of priorities and follow through with sustained, consistent action over years, then success follows.
Resources are extremely limited, and every action needs to have maximum impact on health and wellbeing.
There is still much more to be achieved. But with a growing understanding of the vital importance of the nation’s health, and a commitment to improving health and wellbeing for those most at risk, we can be optimistic that public health will continue to grow in confidence and effectiveness in the decades to come.
