PUBLIC HEALTH

Public Health Manifesto (18th January 2010)
The Faculty of Public Health and the Royal Society for Public Health have published a package of 12 practical recommendations that will improve the UK's health and well-being for the new decade if adopted by the next government.
Manifesto

Alcohol and Food: making the public health connections (6th January 2010)
This report is a literature review into the links surrounding alcohol and food. It is the first step in the process of making the public aware of the dangers and benefits that food and alcohol together represent.
Report

A Healthier Nation (13th January 2010)

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, has launched the Conservative Party’s new green paper on public health - A Healthier Nation.

The paper shows the need for overhauling how better public health should be promoted:

• There must be a focus on reducing health inequalities, in a locally led public health strategy and throughoutgovernment - from the strengthening of support for families with young children to reducing preventable winter deaths among elderly people.
• Some parts of public health policy need to be led nationally - immunisation programmes, emergency planning orbehaviour change campaigns. Wherever possible, these should be evidence-based and linked to the latest advancesin social psychology and behavioural economics, so that they work intelligently with the way real people live their everyday lives.
• Responsibility for improving public health, and the budget to do so, must be decentralised as far as possible - away from central government control and out to local communities.
• Councils, communities and independent providers should be rewarded for reducing health problems like obesity, teenage pregnancy and alcohol abuse – when they make serious savings for the NHS and the taxpayer, they shouldbe rewarded for it

Paper