Agenda item

Members are asked to consider the information presented within the report and note the key issues described.

Dr Bruce Laurence, Director of Public Health addressed the Select Committee, a summary of his update is set out below.

Inequalities Summit

A long planned health inequalities summit meeting, held on behalf of the Health and Wellbeing Board, took place on May 11^th in the Guildhall. It was organised by members of the public health and strategy and performance teams and chaired by the board’s co-chairs. About 70 people from many organisations participated and there were a wide range of speakers from individuals giving their own personal stories, to community workers, a local GP and a DPH from Coventry. Feedback from the event was very positive and a lot of information was obtained.

A meeting was then held the following week to decide how to make use of the energy and ideas coming from this event to influence policies across the B&NES partnerships and an action plan will come from that meeting that will endeavour to thread the reduction in health inequality through the work of the Council, NHS and wider partnerships. There will be a presentation on this meeting and outputs at a forthcoming Health and Wellbeing Board and then a further update to the select committee if wanted.

Health improvement

An important function of some of the public health workers that we fund, are those developmental health improvement roles that are not directly client-facing but work with a range of organisations and businesses whose work impacts on the health of residents. Elements of these services which include work with schools, businesses, licenced premises, food outlets and other partner organisations have till now been based in the public health team, the public protection team and in Sirona. In order to realise savings from these functions the number of staff is being reduced (without any redundancies), but to retain the maximum utility from the resource, the remaining staff will have more generic job descriptions and will be more closely coordinated so that they can focus flexibly on priority areas at any given time.

This team will eventually be managed by the public health department, through a phased transition. Anticipating this we have now adopted a shared work programme and created a  virtual team of health improvement  practitioners across the Council  which includes the  sport and active  lifestyle team and  the food policy work  and the  Director of Public Health award  team  together with the staff in the public health team and Sirona.

NHS Health Checks

BEMS+ (ex-Bath Emergency Medical Service, who are now a provider organisation drawing on B&NES primary care staff) were appointed as our Outreach Provider for NHS Health Checks and are preparing to start delivery in June 2016. They are approaching local workplaces to offer the free checks and particularly targeting male workforce in routine and manual labour. If Councillors have any connections to local businesses that they know of it would be great to have some leads. BEMS + will be offering Health Checks to front line staff from the Place Directorate as well – road services, waste services etc. We could also provide a session for Councillors in the relevant age bracket at the Guildhall if there was interest in that. It is widely felt that a more targeted approach to health checks is a much better use of resources than the standard approach targeted only by age band.

Dental survey

A survey of dental health in 0-5s based on a school based survey has just been published.  The good news is that 85% of children in B&NES have no decayed missing or filled teeth at age 5 which ranks us third equal of all upper tier authorities in the country after only South Glos and Wokingham. The SW regional average is 78.5%, England average is 75.2% and the worst are little over 40% so it is a very varied picture nationally.

This particular indicator is the headline one being put out by PHE and seems to me to be the best single figure to benchmark by, but we rank well by any of the measures in the survey. There is also improvement on the previous survey in 2012.

The not so good news is that most of the dental caries that we still have are potentially avoidable, and that in B&NES dental ill health is concentrated in certain communities, so we should continue recent discussions on appropriately targeted work. Fortuitously, a dental health strategy and action plan across the west of England region has also been produced which will support our efforts.

Councillor Lin Patterson said that she had been approached by some local residents who were concerned over the use of wifi within schools and the neurological effect it may have on children.

Dr Bruce Laurence replied that he was not able to answer this point directly and would do some research before responding to the Select Committee.

Councillor Eleanor Jackson asked if there was any information available from Public Health on how to avoid catching Scarlet Fever.

Dr Bruce Laurence replied that there has been a small resurgence in cases and that information has been circulated to all local schools and GP surgeries.

Councillor Eleanor Jackson asked if the Shingles vaccination was being rationed.

Dr Bruce Laurence replied that the vaccination was only given to patients of a certain age and that he would circulate the policy relating to the vaccination.

The Chair thanked Dr Laurence for his update on behalf of the Select Committee.