Providing Public Health advice and services is a statutory responsibility for local authorities. It is about helping people to stay healthy and protecting them from threats to their health. Sometimes public health activities involve helping individuals. At other times they involve dealing with wider factors that have an impact on the health of many people. Examples of this include an age-group, an ethnic group, or a locality.
Public health aims to reduce the causes of ill health and improve people’s health and wellbeing. It covers the following areas:
- improving people's health
action to improve health and wellbeing and to reduce health inequalities. For example, by helping people quit smoking or improving their living conditions. - health protection
protecting individuals, groups and populations from infectious disease and non-infectious public health threats. This includes infectious disease control, protection against environmental health hazards and emergency response. We also take action for clean air, water and food. - health services
responsible for public health services including health visiting and school nursing, sexual health services and drug and alcohol treatment services. Also advising the NHS to ensure our health services are effective, efficient and accessible to all.
The Council commissions its Public Health function from Cornwall Council. You can find out more about the Public Health team and the work they undertake on our behalf on the Cornwall Council website.
Director of Public Health Annual Report
Each year, the Director of Public Health produces a Public Health Annual Report. This year’s report focusses on work and health and is attached to the right-hand side of this webpage.
Having good quality work and a decent income are the most important building blocks of our health and wellbeing.
The report states that:
- Having a safe and secure job improves health and wellbeing across people’s lives and protects against social exclusion
- Unemployment is bad for health and wellbeing. It is associated with shorter life expectancy and greater ill health
- Jobs should:
- be stable and offer a decent living wage
- enable people to afford secure housing
- represent opportunities for learning
- offer sufficient flexibility to enable people to balance work and family life
- offer protection from adverse working conditions that can damage health
The report has 12 recommendations, these include the creation of a Good Work Charter and more support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It also urges larger employers to play a greater role in tackling health inequalities.
You can read the Director of Public Health reports from previous years on the Cornwall Council website.