PHT Sept 2014 PHT Sept 2014
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In this issue > Interview: US public health guru Georges Benjamin > FPH Annual Conference: catch up on what you missed The magazine of the > Learning from the AIDS crisis in dealing with Ebola UK Faculty of Public Health www.fph.org.uk September 2014 Loud and clear The advocacy edition Public Health Today FROM THE PRESIDENT UP FRONT The magazine of the UK Faculty of Public Health www.fph.org.uk ‘Health in every News in brief September 2014 Welcome policy’ dropped from Double vaccines ‘hasten the end of polio’ Contents Using both types of polio vaccine could Welsh white paper speed up efforts to free the world of the Up Front 3 E WAS responsible for the disease, research suggests. The oral vaccine traditional environmental is leading the fight to eradicate polio, but services of water supply, trials in India show an additional injection ‘H n THE Welsh Government’s public health Stagnant incomes among the low paid – of inactivated virus boosts immunity, Interview with Georges Benjamin 4 sewage disposal, food control and hygiene; for the public white paper, Listening to you – your health actually a fall in real terms, the first according to the journal Science. health aspects of housing; for the matters, sets out wide-ranging proposals, substantial decrease since the 1960s. control and prevention of infectious including action to reduce the harms Read FPH’s response :http://bit.ly/1pcVJT4 ‘Sugar intake must be slashed further’ caused by smoking, alcohol misuse and The target to reduce sugar consumption Special feature: Advocacy 6 disease; for the maternity and child welfare clinics and their attendant health obesity, and strong practical actions that EU-US Trade agreement should be much more ambitious, health Make yourself clear 6 visitors and midwives; he was will have a positive impact on health and Most FPH members believe that experts say. The latest official advice is that responsible for the TB dispensary and the wellbeing. overwhelming international evidence sugar should account for 5% of energy Scotland’s battle to lead the world in VD clinic; then... he was in charge of The Faculty of Public Health’s (FPH) key points to a universal health service intake – down from 10%. But a study banning cheap alcohol 7 school health. Now to all this was added concern, responding to the plans, is to available to all, free at the point of need published in the BMC Public Health journal responsibility for the management of the highlight part of the preceding green paper and funded through general taxation, as said the target should be no more than 3%. Online network fighting gender local hospital. The Medical Officer of that didn’t reach the white paper: being the cheapest and most effective way stereotyping 7 Health [MOH} was at the height of his We have a choice of role models for proposals to ensure that health was built to deliver healthcare. Most of us in public Guide dog owners ‘fearful’ of cyclists into all Welsh Government policies. FPH health believe in integrating health and A charity for blind people has said guide Debate: Should your advocacy power; this was the peak of his career.” the practice of public health, most said that a framework for health in all social care; and in setting the best possible dog owners are scared of going out in organisation accept industry funding? 8 I quote here from Sidney Chave’s seminal notably Edwin Chadwick and John Snow essay on The Rise and Fall of the Medical at the national level and William Henry policies should form a central pillar of legal, regulatory and fiscal conditions to London because of cyclists. The Guide Land of the living 9 Officer of Health. I quoted it previously Duncan and his equivalents around the an eventual Welsh public health bill, promote and protect the public’s health. Dogs for the Blind Association said it had in a paper for the AGM of the Faculty of UK at the local. During my career, I have ensuring strong collaborative links That is why FPH sees the Transatlantic seen more reports from guide dog owners How a thank-you letter became Community Medicine in 1988 entitled been privileged to sit at the feet of a across different sectors, and a strategic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a who had been hit by a cyclist or come a filmscript 10 Where have all the troublemakers succession of colleagues, friends and national approach supported by local free-trade agreement under negotiation close to a collision. Rob Harris from the initiatives. between the EU and USA, as a threat to group said some visually impaired people Personal stories can shape policy 10 gone?. I lamented, with one of the citizens who have made major fathers of the Faculty of Public Health, contributions to public health and the Read FPH’s response: http://bit.ly/1nQwVAX the health and livelihoods of all the were “fearful” about going out. Girls on film 11 Huw Francis, the passing of the robust human condition. Very few have made populations involved. FPH predicts several tradition of “the breadth and richness of that contribution by remaining seated Food poverty on the increase threats to public health from TTIP: Children flock to hospital to have teeth out Many voices of health 12 n classical public health” as articulated by behind their desks. Perhaps most vivid There is known to be a gap in health It will reduce the sovereign ability of The number one reason for children of Data bombshell proves new law Sir John Simon and quoted by Huw. The has been the example of my friend circumstances and outcomes between rich governments to legislate to protect health, primary school age being admitted to packs a punch 13 latter went on to eavesdrop on Sir John Slobodan Lang, City Medical Officer for and poor people in the UK. The reasons for safety and the working conditions of their hospital is to have multiple teeth taken Simon reflecting in 1890 on his annual Zagreb, whose practice of public health inequalities are complex, but many people out. The number of children aged five to n Use meetings briefings and reports as MOH of the City of London extended to him standing between working families are now living in poverty It will hinder the ability of governments nine needing hospital treatment for dental hard evidence 13 from 1849 onwards: “After a lapse of so Serbian tanks and striking miners in – and do not have enough income for a to protect the environment and to prevent problems has risen by more than 3,000 in decent diet. That was the FPH’s message to global warming, by limiting regulation of the past three years, according to figures Do media campaigns improve health? 14 many years... I rejoice to remember that, Kryena and mediating. Slobodan is even in those early days, I did my best to certainly out of the mould of ‘classical the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into industry and commerce analysed by the Health and Social Care n make clear to the commission, what public health’; there are many more from Hunger and Food Poverty, led by Frank It will interfere with national policies on Information Centre. sufferings and degradation were a wide range of backgrounds and not Field MP. The submission focused on three provision of health and social care. incurred by the masses of the labouring necessarily with public health in their job problems: Read FPH’s response to the recent Kerala plans to ban alcohol The Secret DPH’s Diary 14 n population through the conditions under title. Somebody who had a profound Increasing food poverty and increasing European Commission consultation on Authorities in the southern Indian state of which they were so generally housed in effect on my personal approach to public use of food banks – a marker of pressure TTIP: http://bit.ly/1pWQMxG Kerala have outlined plans to ban the sale courts and alleys they inhabited: not only health was the Governor of for emergency food aid and consumption of alcohol to tackle the n Volatile food prices which are proving Mark Weiss state’s drink problem. The first phase of the FPH Annual Conference 2014 15 how unwholesome were those Visagapatnam in India. Every night at the conditions, but how shamefully end of the working day, he would go increasingly hard for lower-income Policy Officer ban would see more than 700 bars and inconsistent with reasonable standards with his driver to the main station and households to manage Faculty of Public Health some shops selling alcohol shut down, of civilisation; and how vain it must be scoop up all the newly arrived children with more alcohol-free days introduced. The government aims to enforce total Books & Publications 19 to expect good social fruit from human and deposit them at the municipal life running its course under such orphanage. Clearly he was acting on an prohibition in 10 years. conditions.” Neither Sir John Simon, understanding of proactive public health. who became the country’s first Chief So we must ask “will we prove worthy Breast cancer test ‘Angelina effect’ found Referrals to breast cancer clinics more than Endnotes 20 Medical Officer, nor Edwin Chadwick, successors or are we to be reduced to president of the Board of Health, were petty clerks and bureaucratic doubled in the UK after Angelina Jolie shrinking violets. They stood up for the commissioners? The wheel turns and we announced she had had a double poor, the dispossessed and those whose are once more having to define what we mastectomy.