The local authority public health directorate’s role
The public health directorate is concerned with seeking ways to protect and improve health and wellbeing, and reduce health inequalities within Blackpool. The work of the team covers:
- Understanding patterns of health and illness across the local population, and the factors that are at work to influence and determine the health of the town’s residents, this includes the production of Health Needs Assessments and the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA)
- Provision of specialist public health advice to commissioners of health services, including the Integrated care boards
- Ensuring the local authority secures the provision of mandated public health services. These are:
- Children’s public health services for 0 to 19 year olds including health visiting
- National Child Measurement programme (NCMP) delivered by the school nursing team
- Oral health epidemiological surveys
- Sexual health services
- NHS Health Checks programme
- Reviewing evidence of effectiveness to inform commissioning strategy and service design
- Devising evidence-based and cost-effective strategies to improve health and wellbeing
- Working with other directorates across the council and partner organisations to maximise opportunities for improving health and wellbeing
- Support, review and challenge the commissioning and delivery of public health services by other agencies, for example the NHS screening and immunisations programmes
- Advocacy at local, regional and national level for policy changes that we believe will bring about improvements in our population’s health, for example minimum unit pricing for alcohol, levy on sugary drinks, and protecting children from promotion of unhealthy foods