Health bill under pressure

Anne Milton, public health minister, told an audience in Chadwick Court recently that environmental health services do a great job with considerable professionalism and make life better. Environmental health practitioners, she confirmed, are part of the public health workforce.

At the event, the CIEH handed its response to the public health white paper personally to Ms Milton. As well as the keynote speakers, the minister, a former nurse, heard presentations from service heads from large and small authorities, a consultant, a smoke-free co-ordinator and a PhD student. She listened attentively, praising Liverpool’s proactive stance on reducing smoking prevalence.

The minister said that the coalition’s public health policy gains its main thrust from the Marmot review — reducing inequalities — within a free at point-of-use health service, paid for by taxation. This is a sea-change; under a previous Conservative government, as Prof Richard Parish, chief executive of the Royal Society for Public Health observed,
one could not refer to inequalities, only ‘regional variations’.

The event also brought the heads of the Association of Directors of Public Health and the UK Faculty of Public Health to Chadwick Court, making useful professional connections between the NHS and local government

Ahead of of implementation of the Health and Social Care Bill by 2013, health and well-being boards are being set up and the CIEH is addressing how to build up the public health capacity of environmental health, through training and professional development.

This month, the bill became front-page news with the publication of a critical health select committee report and coverage of prime minister David Cameron’s apparent dissatisfaction with the way the bill has been presented to the public. A lull in its progress for further consultation was announced.

Changes to the bill could alter the relative powers of GP commissioning and health and well-being boards and directors of public health. So, the future has become a little less clear. On the plus side, Ms Milton said last week she believes strongly in ring-fenced public health funding and is a champion of local government and environmental health.
So there is much to be hopeful about.

Tags: Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, Environmental Health News, General environmental health, public health