The council and its partners recognise that tackling inequalities in wellbeing and health and improving wellbeing and health for all involves both:
- improving the conditions in which people are born, grow up, live their lives and grow old, and,
- strengthening the impact of services we provide and commission.
Newcastle City Council’s Vision for Public Health and Thematic Briefings
In April 2013, Newcastle City Council took over lead responsibility for public health in Newcastle. The council sees this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change lives across Newcastle for the better, and this is reflected in the paper 'A vision for Public Health in Newcastle'.
As part of the new responsibilities, the Council has taken over the role for commissioning a range of ‘public health’ services from the former Newcastle Primary Care NHS Trust. These services are grouped into eight themes as follows:
- Vision document for consultation (doc, 1.6mb)
- Children and young people (doc, 932kb)
- Drugs and alcohol (doc, 1.19mb)
- Fluoridation and oral health (doc, 784kb)
- NHS health checks (doc, 939kb)
- Obesity nutrition and physical activity (doc, 889kb)
- Sexual health (doc, 817kb)
- Tobacco (doc, 1.5mb)
- Wellbeing and health improvement (doc, 924kb)
All of these topic areas require a range of policy actions as well as service provision. In order to focus in on the new commissioning responsibilities, the council has created the Thematic Briefings (above) which outline the policy context; current understanding of needs; existing service provision and intentions to change or re-configure what is commissioned. The Council is now consulting on the Vision for Public Health and the eight Thematic Briefings. Please leave your thoughts on the topic wall. The consultation runs until 17 July 2013.
