Issue - meetings

To consider the annual report of the Health Protection Board which documents the progress made on the priorities and recommendations set out in the 2015-16 report; highlights the key areas of work that have taken place in 2016-17 and identifies priorities for the next 12 months.

12 noon – 20 mins – Becky Reynolds

(Note: At this point Dr Ian Orpen left the meeting and Cllr Paul May took the chair.)

The Board considered a report setting out the annual report of the B&NES Health Protection Board 2016/17.  The report detailed the progress made by the Board on its priorities and recommendations, highlighted the areas of work that had taken place in the last year and identified priorities for the forthcoming year.

Becky Reynolds, Consultant in Public Health, and Anna Brett, Health Protection Manager, gave a presentation covering the following issues:

·  Definition of Health Protection

·  Specialist areas covered by the Health Protection Board

·  Progress on 2015/16 priorities – 4 of the priorities had been rated as “green” and 3 as “amber”.

·  The primary school project to raise antibiotic awareness had been particularly successful.  The campaign in B&NES to raise awareness of the importance of using antibiotics won in the Community Engagement category of this year’s national Antibiotic Guardian awards.

·  The importance of immunisation was stressed and in particular the uptake of the MMR vaccination.

·  Illegal tattooing was another issue that had arisen last year with a particular instance of under 18 year olds being tattooed by an unregistered tattooist.

Andrew Smith stated that the antimicrobial resistance strategy had been very helpful to GPs.

It was noted that overall in B&NES there had been a 65% uptake of bowel cancer screening.  Research showed that men were less likely to participate in screening than women.

A copy of the presentation slides is attached as Appendix 3 to these minutes.

RESOLVED:

(1)  To note the annual report of the Health Protection Board for 2016/17.

(2)  To support the following priorities for the Board for 2017/18:

·  Assurance: continue to monitor the performance of specialist area, identify risks, ensure mitigation is in place and escalate as necessary.

·  Support activities to slow the development and spread of antimicrobial resistance.

·  Continue to ensure that the public are informed about emerging threats to health.

·  Support the review, development and implementation of all Air Quality Action Plans.

·  Improve the uptake of flu vaccinations in at risk groups, pregnant women, health and social care workers, and carers; and pneumococcal vaccination amongst under 65s at risk and over 65s.

·  Continue to reduce health inequalities in screening and immunisation programmes.