A Vision for the Public's Health

Creating a smoke-free generation

• Implement fully the government’s commitment to a smokefree generation set out in Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation, with action to prevent smoking before it starts, support smokers to quit and stop vapes being marketed to children.

Reducing alcohol-related harm

• England and Northern Ireland should adopt Minimum Unit Pricing to restrict access to cheap high strength alcohol, following its successful introduction in Scotland and Wales.
• Rapidly deliver a long-term and substantial expansion in treatment services for alcohol dependency.
• The UK government should publish a comprehensive strategy on reducing alcohol harm, addressing issues such as advertising, the drink drive alcohol limit and public awareness of harm.

Reducing drug dependence

• Establish a non-partisan, independent commission to review UK drugs legislation based on national and international evidence of what works in reducing harm.
• Government should remove legislative barriers to innovative interventions to reducing drug dependence and drug-related harm.
• People who use drugs should be offered support and treatment rather than punishment.

Supporting a healthy, sustainable diet and physical activity across the lifecourse

• Create a strategic plan to shift the UK to a healthier, more sustainable dietary pattern that reduces inequalities of diet-related health and wellbeing.
• Provide additional resources and a stronger role for local government in the governance and delivery of food at a local level, giving it more control over issues such as takeaways targeting schoolchildren.
• Promote policies and incentives geared towards creating healthy, sustainable environments that promote active travel and greater physical activity levels across the life course, healthy ageing, and building the capacity and capability of the health and care workforce to promote physical activity in all settings.

Building a healthy workforce

• Government and employers need to support people with long Covid, long-term sickness and disability to access healthcare and rehabilitation services, such as physical and psychological therapies, peer support and training.
• Government needs to provide employers with financial and tax incentives to encourage more investment in staff health and wellbeing, such as occupational health services, particularly among SMEs, who find it more difficult to fund such services. Providing occupational health services should be compulsory for large employers.

Tackling health inequalities and their drivers

• Establish measurable, long-term targets to reduce health inequalities as part of a strategic partnership between national governments, local government and public health teams to reduce and prevent the social causes of poor health with specific prioritisation of inequalities related to mental health, maternal and infant mortality, HIV and sexual health, cardiovascular disease and musculoskeletal conditions.
• That the next Government introduce new limits for PM2.5 and PM10 concentration levels that are in line with the WHO guidelines, and make a legally binding commitment to meet these levels by 2030.
• Take urgent action to improve the social determinants of health and address the underlying causes of health inequalities, including poverty, employment opportunities, insecure housing, and structural racism.
• Support inclusive and meaningful engagement with communities, prioritising co-production and community participation as a cross government commitment

Addressing poverty and the cost-of-living crisis

• Increase local government funding and change the way that resources are allocated to ensure that more investment in the NHS and other public services is targeted at the most deprived areas with the worst economic and health outcomes.
• Extend the National Living Wage to all employees of any age, replacing the National Minimum Wage that applies to workers aged 16-20.
• Scrap the two-child limit and the benefit cap for universal credit, delivering significant income gains for many of the poorest families for a cost of £3bn.
• Provide funding for housing associations and local authorities to deliver a net increase of 90,000 social rent homes a year in England, with comparable targets adopted across the UK.
• Provide funding for housing associations and local authorities to deliver a net increase of 90,000 social rent homes a year in England, with comparable targets adopted across the UK.
• Commit to a new Child Poverty Act which commits to ending child poverty in all parts of the UK by 2030.

Giving children the best start in life

• Local authorities and the NHS across the UK should establish clear plans with measurable targets for improving support for families during the first 1000 days of life.
• Government in all UK nations must adopt a ‘health in all policies’ approach to tackling child poverty, with an emphasis on the first 1000 days of life, including funding to support local plans.
• Expand access to free school meals for all children in households receiving universal credit, removing the income cap. Addressing the root causes of economic inactivity.

Addressing the root causes of economic inactivity

• Reduce economic inactivity and improve health for people in work by taking coordinated action to address barriers to work due to ill health, increase support for those out of work as a result of illness and disability, and work with business to support employee health, keep people in work and promote healthier workplaces.
• UK governments should give local authorities powers to bring together local and national resources and stakeholders to deliver focused action on economic inactivity and ill health.
• Work across government to drive increased investment in preventative healthcare and support for those with long-term physical and mental health conditions, alongside a coordinated approach to skills development and employment support.

Taking action against climate-related health harm

• Implement immediate measures to help limit global warming to 1.5°C, such as accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies.
• Support and incentivise programmes and policies to accelerate the shift to low-carbon transport systems.
• Support educational and other incentives to encourage transition to sustainable, affordable plant-based diets.
• Consider the impact of climate change in all national and local government policy decisions.
• Advise and encourage planning by all organisations to become net zero. 

Building health protection and pandemic preparedness

• Governments to improve awareness across departments of the structures, roles, responsibilities and capabilities of the public health system and workforce.
• Regularly review, update and publish national pandemic preparedness plans and risk assessments for infectious diseases.
• Put local public health directors at the heart of preparations for combating pandemics and other infectious diseases, recognising their central role in effective community responses.
• Ensure the local public health voice is actively sought and listened to during infectious disease outbreaks, so that their vital insights into how diseases are impacting communities are reflected in national plans. 

Investing in the specialist public health workforce

• Expand the specialist public health workforce to ensure all UK nations maintain their capacity and capability to improve population health, tackle health inequalities and respond to pandemics and other population health threats.
• Provide sufficient investment to secure the training and deployment of a specialist workforce of 30 public health specialists per million population, for all regions and devolved nations of the UK.
• Launch a national strategy to develop and support the wider public health workforce, to supplement the impact of specialists in delivering health in all policies.
• Build on the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan through a long-term commitment to funding the expansion of workforce training it sets out, legislating to update projections of future workforce needs and boosting staff retention by taking stronger action on pay, conditions and workplace cultures.

Enhancing public health through fair funding of local services

• Restore the real term cuts in Public Health Grant in England by committing to a £1 billion increase in funding to support local public health teams as they deliver vital work to protect communities and improve health, with commensurate increases in funding for the other nations.
• All UK governments to commit to a multi-year settlement for public health, providing certainty for transformative investments locally, regionally and nationally.
• Given the critical role of the NHS in secondary prevention, provide stable, long-term investment to meet underlying demand and cost pressures, increase capacity and strengthen the resilience of the NHS.

Delivering population-level interventions and policies

• Deliver a bold, ambitious goal to improve the nation’s health to sit alongside the net zero target and increasing economic growth as the key drivers of government policy over the next decade and beyond.
• Encourage cross-government and cross-system partners, backed by strong leadership from the Prime Minister, to collaborate to improve the social, structural and commercial determinants of health.
• Ensure national departments and agencies and regional and local bodies integrate policies to improve public health. Learn from and build on the Well-being of Future Generations Act in Wales, with a view to a similar act to be implemented in England.
• Embed prevention in routine healthcare practice and clinical care pathways for the NHS in all UK nations.
• Prioritise the development of a Health Index that is inclusive of health outcome measures, modifiable risk factors and the social determinants of health.
• Invest in research and evaluation, and the public health academic workforce, to generate high quality evidence on effective actions to improve public health at local and national levels.
• Ensure that new regional and local bodies, and efforts to promote economic and social development, incorporate a strong focus on reducing health inequalities.