To present the Director of Public Health Annual Report 2017 and to seek the support of the Health and Wellbeing Board in implementing the recommendations.

The director of public health introduced her annual report for 2017. Directors of Public Health have a statutory duty to produce an independent annual report on the health of their population. This report sits alongside the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA). The director highlighted that:

·         the health and wellbeing of the population was generally improving although there were some areas of concern;

·         the areas of concern had been picked up in other related plans;

·         the key areas for action were obesity in both adults and children, children’s mental health, developing a strategic and coordinated approach to embedding community focused and strengths based approaches and how to build the resilience of health and social systems;

·         there was a need to look at priority groups across all plans and strategies and to embed health in all policies for example strengthening licensing conditions around fast food outlets and alcohol free zones;

·         there was a need to strengthen the embedding of making every contact count (MECC), for example anyone having contact with a family could have a conversation about access to dentists and reducing consumption of sugary drinks to promote good oral health;

·         an oral health plan and healthy weight plan were being developed;

·         building individual, family and community resilience would underpin efforts to improve childhood mental health;

·         the ageing well plan would look at sustainable health and welfare and what could be done around environmental changes and MECC with an aim to have people living in good health longer;

·         the strategic prevention board, which included representatives from the council, CCG and HVOSS would be working to embed prevention, this needed support from the health and wellbeing board.

In discussion of the report board members noted that:

·         organisations represented on the board should seek to support their own staff to live healthy lives and take a lead in embedding the practices recommended;

·         work was going on both locally and nationally with supermarket chains to promote fresh food and change how sweets were marketed;

·         care should be taken in the tone of communications and there should be a focus on practical things that could be done, it was recognised that there was no single solution to the issues but a lot of individual steps would contribute to overall improvement;

·         communication should be consistent and marketed in a non-preachy way;

·         environmental health would be included in future reports, the JSNA breakdown at local community level would identify particular areas to target and the Hereford City Plan would also be considered;

·         it was important to link together strategies and identify barriers;

·         key messages should be included in induction for new staff members in organisations represented on the board, including MECC training;

·         positive examples should be used in communications as case studies;

·         there was a need to work at grass roots level and give ownership to local communities;

·         business cases for projects such as the Hereford bypass should reflect the potential savings from improved public health;

·         that the board should consider a future workshop on environmental health impacts.

Actions identified by the board included:

·         looking at the policies and practices in place within board member’s own organisations to support the health and wellbeing of staff members and their families;

·         improving communication of the areas of concern and focus in the report;

·         ensuring relevant members of staff undertake ‘making every contact count’ training;

·         encouraging staff to highlight examples of successful projects which could be used as case studies in communications;

·         exploring pooling resources for outreach workers;

·         highlighting the potential health benefits of infrastructure projects when creating business cases and the savings that these can generate; and

·         Identifying health impacts of environmental pollution / air quality as a topic for a future workshop.

It was resolved that:

(a)  The Health and Wellbeing Board provides leadership to the process of implementing the recommendations of the Director of Public Health Annual Report by communicating the key messages of the report to their constituent members; and

(b)  The Health and Wellbeing Board receives quarterly reports from the Director of Public Health on the progress being made in leading the implementation of the recommendations and as part of this process considers how it will support the Director of Public Health in overcoming barriers that may arise.