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** 29 March 2021
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** UK
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** Tackling obesity and ill health Government’s “top priority” in coronavirus pandemic recovery (#1)
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** Marmot: Austerity-era cuts to local government must be reversed (#2)
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** Public Health Grant is a slap in the face for Warrington says health chief (#3)
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** North West: Shops and flat at the centre of anti-social behaviour and fake cigarettes supply closed by police (#4)
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** BBC Sounds: You and Yours (#5)
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** International
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** Study: Smoking contributes to higher mortality rate in men 50-plus (#6)
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** UK
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Amid warnings that 80% of poor health outcomes are caused by unhealthy lifestyles, Boris Johnson will today announce a new Office for Health Promotion to tackle obesity, promote physical activity, and improve mental health. Tackling obesity and ill health have been designated the country’s “top priority” in efforts to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Britain’s covid death toll has been fuelled by its obesity epidemic, with two in three adults overweight or obese. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said that about 80% of people’s health outcomes are not due to their healthcare but wider preventable risk factors, such as diet, smoking and exercise. Ill health among the working-age population costs the economy £100 billion per year.

Health officials said its approach would be modelled on methods tried abroad, such as in Singapore, which had a “national steps challenge” encouraging people to compete, using digital trackers. Preventing the onset of avoidable physical and mental illness and protecting the nation’s health will be the top priority for this Government as the country eases out of lockdown, they said.

Boris Johnson said: “The new Office for Health Promotion will be crucial in tackling the causes, not just the symptoms, of poor health and improving prevention of illnesses. COVID-19 has demonstrated the importance of physical health in our ability to tackle such illnesses, and we must continue to help people to lead healthy lives so we can all better prevent and fight illnesses.”

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: “Good physical and mental health are central to our happiness and well-being. Yet, so much of what keeps us healthy happen outside of hospitals and the health service. The new organisation would bring health promotion into the heart of Government, he said, in order to level up the health of our nation. Prevention is better than cure. By putting in place innovative prevention measures, we can help everyone to live longer, healthier lives as we ease back to normality and relieve pressures from our NHS.”

The creation of the new body follows the axing of PHE, which has been fiercely criticised for its handling of the pandemic. The agency’s responsibilities will be split between two new organisations, the UK Health Security Agency, in charge of tackling security against infectious diseases, and the Office for Health Promotion, charged with improving the nation’s health.

The new office will be led by an expert reporting to Health Secretary Matt Hancock and chief medical officer for England Professor Chris Whitty. There will be no new funding for the office, with its resources coming from the existing health budget, according to Department of Health and Social Care, where it will be based.

Source: The Telegraph, 29 March 2021

See also: Express - Boris's new drive to help Britons live longer as pandemic sheds light on nation's health ([link removed])

DHSC - New Office for Health Promotion to drive improvement of nation’s health ([link removed])

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** Speaking at the LGC Future Places Conference on 25 March, Sir Michael Marmot said that cuts to local government funding during austerity need to be reversed and that he supports the role of local government in public health.

He was asked how much local government could do to address health inequalities given huge cuts to their budgets, and whether measures to tackle the issues, he had identified always require large amounts of money. He said that while “as a nation, shortage of money should not be the issue” due to the low cost of government borrowing and quantitative easing, “at the local government level you do need money, no question.”

Referring to the 32% reduction in local authority spending in the most deprived 20% of areas during austerity, Sir Michael said: “Those cuts need to be reversed. When the government said austerity is over, they didn’t mean austerity was over. They meant “we’re not going to gouge you any further.” What they really should mean if austerity is over is “we’re going to work to restore those cuts.”

“If your budget’s been cut by 32% and you’re in a deprived area, there’s only so much you can do without more money – there’s no question about that,” he said. “That said, there’s quite a lot you can do with the money that you have.”

Sir Michael was also asked about councils’ public health functions. He said a senior politician had suggested to him that the 2012 reforms, which moved this responsibility to local authorities, had failed. In response, he pointed to the budget cuts to Public Health England and local authorities over the same period. He added: “In principle having public health with local government sounds to me like a good idea, but [the] local government has to be properly funded, and the public health element has to be properly funded.”

Source: LGC, 25 March 2021
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** The Government’s annual public health grant awarded to Warrington Borough Council for the next financial year is “woefully inadequate” and is a “slap in the face for Warrington”, according to the council’s cabinet member for Public Health and Wellbeing, Maureen Mclaughlin.

Councillor McLaughlin says it fails to recognise both the costs of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and the importance of tackling the factors that make people more susceptible to the disease. She points out that despite over a year of intense work tackling the coronavirus pandemic, and with further demands on the system expected as lockdown gradually eases, the grant allocated by the Government is just £59.75 per head of population – an increase of only 0.67%. The council is expected to manage additional responsibilities, so this is a cut in real terms.

Councillor McLaughlin added: “Despite public health being thrust into the spotlight over the last 12 months, the Government has completely overlooked the important role of local teams both in tackling the pandemic and in delivering programmes to reduce health inequalities and address health risks such as smoking and obesity. After the terrible year we’ve had, it beggars belief that this Government still hasn’t grasped the implications of the Covid crisis. It has been local councils and health partners that have done much of the work on disease prevention and control. NHS staff were rewarded with a paltry 1% pay rise, whilst councils are hit with a derisory funding settlement that is a big cut in real terms.”

In response, Andy Carter, Conservative MP for Warrington South, said: “The Government is supporting Directors of Public Health, and their teams, to protect and improve the public’s health and wellbeing during the pandemic and beyond. As part of the recent Spending Review, I’m pleased that the Government committed to keeping the public health grant, meaning Warrington Borough Council can continue to invest in prevention and essential frontline health services. In addition to the baseline funding for public health which has seen an increase, we have also made over £11 billion available to local councils to support them with the costs and impacts of Covid-19, such as the £1.3 million that has been available for Warrington for track and trace.”

Source: Warrington Worldwide, 29 March 2021
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** Two shops and a flat have been closed by police for three months after they were linked to anti-social behaviour in the district. Cheshire Constabulary executed warrants at the shops along with flats above. About 50,000 packets of counterfeit cigarettes and around 3kg of counterfeit tobacco were seized during the raids in addition to a quantity of cash.

Officers imposed 48-hour closure notices on the stores and one of the flats and subsequently applied for three-month closure orders to be enforced on the three addresses. Chester Magistrates Court granted the application on Friday, March 19, under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.

HM Revenue and Customs are now investigating the counterfeit tobacco products that were found in the properties.

Source: Manchester Evening News, 23 March 2021
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** On Thursday, 25th March, Dr Gemma Taylor Addiction & Mental Health Group at University of Bath and Joanne, an ex-smoker who quit last year, appeared on BBC Sounds You and Yours to discuss new research showing quitting smoking can improve mental health.

Listen from 29:20 to 36:05.
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** Source: BBC Sounds, 25 March 2021
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** International
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** A new study has found that men aged 50 and older may have a 60% higher risk of dying than women of the same age group, partly due to heavier smoking and heart disease rates in men. Published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), the study also found that the mortality rate among men and women varied across countries.

The study, which sought to investigate the association between sex and mortality, included over 179,044 participants with a median age of 63 in 28 countries. The researchers included socioeconomic (education, wealth), lifestyle (smoking, alcohol consumption), social (marital status, living alone) and health factors (cardiovascular disease, diabetes, mental disorders) as covariates to test whether these factors contributed to the mortality gap between men and women.

Findings revealed that men had a 60% higher mortality risk than women after adjusting for age, yet the effect sizes varied across countries. The researchers said: “Among all factors, smoking had the largest contribution to the difference in mortality between men and women, particularly in the countries where men had more than twice the mortality risk of women (Estonia, Poland and Japan). International studies and primary research in these regions have reported large sex differences in the prevalence of smoking and related morbidity and mortality, with trends that are stable or decreasing in men but increasing in women.”

Source: Toronto Sun, 28 March 2021

See also: CMAJ - Sex differences in mortality: results from a population-based study of 12 longitudinal cohorts ([link removed])
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.

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