Unit 13 Role of Public Health in Health and Social Care
3.2 How effective are the strategies, systems and policies for ensuring health and wellbeing of London population? Strategies, systems and policies for ensuring health and wellbeing of London population – Health and wellbeing strategy influence the Public
Health, NHS and Social Care Outcomes, and the Children and Young People’s Outcomes, that will make the most difference to the lives of people in the City. Acknowledging and supporting good work already undertaking, whilst helping meet up-coming challenges, including an ageing population, a reduction in household income for many families in the area, and an uncertain economic outlook is the new strategy of health and wellbeing board of London city (Almond, 2014) Some of the priorities under this strategy are determined through –
The number of people affected
The severity or impact of the issue
Can we do anything about it – are there cost-effective, evidence based steps we can take to tackle the issue?
Does it tie into the objectives of the City’s Corporate Plan, which aims to support businesses and communities?
Will the City be a better place to live and work if we tackle this issue?
Is there a current gap in provision or service that we have identified?
Do we have the resources to tackle this (or are there resources that we can get)?
Three new systems or policies to be followed by Health and Wellbeing board of London –
Bedding-in the new system – maximizing opportunities for promoting public health amongst the worker population, and taking on broader responsibilities for health
Improving joint working and integration, to provide better value
Addressing key health and wellbeing challenges, such as, people with mental health issues can find effective and joined up help, more people in city take advantage of Public Health preventions and interventions, City is healthier to breathe and people in the city are more physically active etc. (Coleman, 2014)
3.3 What changes could be made to improve the health and wellbeing of people in London? Some of the changes that can be made to improve the health and wellbeing of people in London are as follows –
Adopt healthy lifestyles
Quit or Limit usage of Smoking and Alcohol
Adopt physical activeness
Control the pollution levels for better livelihood in the city
Control the epidemic of diseases by informing and communicating
Signing up more and more people for prevention and intervention schemes of the government under NHS
Have economic independence and sustainability
Availability of healthcare opportunities and affordability
Treating all the patients with equality, especially those with specific needs
Stricter legislation for proper implementation of all the health and social care policies of the government
Proper planning and implementation at workplaces and organization for health and safety
Providing proper infrastructure, including information technology, social media, newer technological advancements, with the existing infrastructure, i.e. Hospitals, Service Homes, Care centres, Labs etc.
The quality of life of patients can be improved through more effective and efficient treatments
Remote testing and diagnosis with treatment (Wanless, 2004)
3.4 How effective is ‘Smoking Cessation Programme’ implemented to encourage people to quit smoking in London? “Smoking Cessation Program” in London, specificity and its effectiveness – Some of the recommended treatments as per the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) UK, that have been proven to be effective, either separately or combined, include –
Brief interventions by a GP and other practitioners working in a GP practice or the community (including advice, self-help materials and referral for more intensive support)
Individual behaviouralcounselling
Group behaviour therapy
Pharmaco-therapies (for example, nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), varenicline or bupropion)
Self-help materials
Telephone counselling and quit lines
Mass-media campaigns to get the stop-smoking message across – using a combination of, for example, TV, radio, newspaper and social media advertising (Brown, 2014) Smoking Cessation program under NHS in London is being implemented by Commissioning Support for London (CSL) and some of the steps and guidelines are as follows –
Implementation of training modules by National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (NCSCT)
Providing Free Quit Kit under NHS Smoke-free campaign
Face to Face Support (Counselling sessions) (Lancaster, 2005)
Free Mobile App (under Smoke-free)
Free Email and Text Support (under NHS Smoke-free)
Offering Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) under (NICE)
Free Smoking Advisors
Stop Smoking Ads
Preventing Relapses (Sinclair, 2004)
All these efforts have led to 31% decrease in smoking quit number of people and number of cases, as per 2011 (Coleman, 2014)
References Advisory Committee on Breast Cancer Screening. 2006. Screening for breast cancer in England: past and future. Journal of Medical Screening, 13(2), 59-61. Almond, M. 2014. Participation in the New Public Health Landscape. In Decentralizing Health Services (pp. 147-159). Springer New York. Brinton, L. A., Cook, M. B., McCormack, V., Johnson, K. C., Olsson, H., Casagrande, J. T., … & Thomas, D. B. 2014. Anthropometric and Hormonal Risk Factors for Male Breast Cancer: Male Breast Cancer Pooling Project Results. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 106(3), djt465. Brown, T., Platt, S., & Amos, A. 2014. Equity impact of European individual-level smoking cessation interventions to reduce smoking in adults: a systematic review. The European Journal of Public Health, cku065. Cavill, N., Biddle, S., & Sallis, J. F. 2001. Health enhancing physical activity for young people: statement of the United Kingdom expert consensus conference.Paediatric Exercise Science, 13(1), 12-25. Coleman, A., Checkland, K., Segar, J., McDermott, I., Harrison, S., & Peckham, S. 2014. Joining it up? Health and Wellbeing Boards in English Local Governance: Evidence from Clinical Commissioning Groups and Shadow Health and Wellbeing Boards. Local Government Studies, (ahead-of-print), 1-21. England, N. H. S. 2013. Putting Patients First: The NHS England business plan for 2013 (Vol. 16, p. p16). 14–2015. England, N. H. S. 2012. The CCG outcomes indicator set 2013/2014. Gunsoy, N. B., Garcia-Closas, M., & Moss, S. M. 2014. Estimating breast cancer mortality reduction and overdiagnosis due to screening for different strategies in the United Kingdom. British journal of cancer.
Hamill, M., Burgoine, K., Farrell, F., Hemelaar, J., Patel, G., Welchew, D. E., & Jaffe, H. W. 2007. Time to move towards opt-out testing for HIV in the UK. BMJ, 334(7608), 1352-1354. HPA 2013‚ ‘United Kingdom – National HIV data surveillance tables’.Order Now