Introduction
The SHA Council agreed to pull together some of the existing policies on prevention and public health, introduce new proposals that have been identified and put them into a policy framework to influence socialist thinking, Labour Party (LP) manifestoes and future policy commitments. The SHA is not funded by the industry, charitable foundations or by governments. We are a socialist society which is affiliated to the Labour Party (LP) and we participate in the LP policy process and promote policies which will help build a healthier and fairer society within the UK and globally. An SHA working group was established to draft papers for the Central Council to consider (Annex 1).
The group were asked to provide short statements on the rationale for specific policies (the Why?), reference the evidence base and prioritise specific policies (the What?). Prevention and Public Health are wide areas for cross government policy development so we have tried to selectively choose policies that would build a healthier population with greater equity between social groups especially by social class, ethnicity, gender and geographical localities. We have taken health and wellbeing to be a broad concept with acknowledgement that this must include mental wellbeing, reduce health inequalities as well as being in line with the principles of sustainable health for future generations locally and globally.
The sections
These documents are divided into five sections to allow focus on specific policy areas as follows:
- Planetary health, global inequalities and sustainable development
- Social and the wider determinants of health
- Promoting people’s health and wellbeing
- Protecting people’s health
- Prevention in health and social care
The working group have been succinct and not reiterated what is a given in public health policies and current LP policy. So for example we accept that smoking kills and what we will propose are specific policies that we should advocate to further tackle Big Tobacco globally, prevent the recruitment of children to become new young smokers, protect people from environmental smoke and enable smokers to quit. We look to a tobacco free society in the relatively near future. Whether tobacco, the food and drink industry, car manufacturers or the gambling sector we will emphasise the need to regulate advertising, protecting children and young people especially and make healthy choices easier and cheaper through regulations and taxation policies.
Wherever appropriate we take a lifecourse approach looking at planned parenthood, maternity and early years all the way through to ageing well. We recognise the importance of place such as the home environment, schools, communities and workplaces and include occupational health and spatial planning in our deliberations.
We discuss the NHS and social care sector and draw out specific priorities for prevention and public health delivery within these services. The vast number and repeated contact that people have with these servces provides opportunities to work with populations across the age groups, deliver specific prevention programmes and use the opportunities for contacts by users as well as carers and friends and relatives to cascade health messages and actions.
The priorities and next steps
In each section we have identified up to ten priorities in that policy area. In order to provide a holistic selection of the overall top ten priorities we have created a summary box of ten priorities which identify the goals, the means of achieving them and some success measures.
This work takes a broad view of prevention and public health. It starts with considering Planetary Health and the climate emergency, global inequalities and the fact that we and future generations live in One World. A central concern for socialists is building a fairer world and societies with greater equity between different social classes, ethnic groups, gender and locality. We appreciate that the determnants of such inequalities lie principally in social conditions, cultural and economic influences. These so called ‘wider determinants and social influences’ need to be addressed if we are to make progress. The sections on the different domains of public health policy and practice sets out a holistic, ecological and socialist approach to promoting health, preventing disease and injury and providing evidence based quality health and social care services for the population.
The work focuses on the Why and What but we recognise the need for further work to support the implementation of these priorities once agreed by the SHA Council. Some will be relatively straightforward but others will be innovative and we need to test them for ease of implementation. A new Public Health Act, as has been established in Wales, but for UK wide policies would make future public health legislation and regulation easier.
The SHA now needs to advocate for the strategic approach set out here and the specific priorities identified by us within the LP policy process so they become part of the LP manifesto commitments.
Dr Tony Jewell (Convener/Editor)
Central Council
July 2019
The complete policy document is available below for downloading.
Public health and Prevention in Health and Social carefinaljuly2019