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** 6 April 2021
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** UK
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** Public health reform: a whole-government priority? - David Buck (#1)
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** What can we expect from England's new Singapore-style Office for Health Promotion? - Nathan Hodson (#2)
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** Van driver celebrates £1m win on scratchcard bought when buying a vape to quit smoking (#3)
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** International
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** Most US adults who vape want to quit, study finds (#4)
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** UK
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** David Buck of the King’s Fund discusses the Government’s new plans for Public Health reform.
One major change is the creation of the new Office for Health Promotion. Buck responds to critics who argue that moving most of the functions of Public Health England (PHE) into the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) ‘proper’ is insubstantial given that PHE staff are already civil servants by noting that PHE has developed a level of expertise since its inception that has huge potential if it can be mobilised across government policy.
This however depends on the leadership of the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and the new cross-government ministerial board for prevention. Can the CMO and the ministerial board show other government departments that working more closely with DHSC is valuable? To show this, the ministerial board must have the power to take decisions about cross-government policies that matter for health, accompanied by clear accountability for the wider determinants of health.
Another component of the reforms is an attempt to bring all of the resources and capability of the NHS to the prevention agenda. Buck suggests that this will require stronger direction, some clearer goals (perhaps even targets), and a change in culture and incentives, since all of the public attention, political focus, cash, and funding mechanisms are still most focused on the immediate issues of acute care like waiting times and care backlogs.
Another element of the plans is the fundamental role for local government in public health. The government needs to fund this function well, Buck argues, particularly given the more important and complex role for directors of public health as they make the reforms work on the ground and navigate the relationship between national, regional and local roles, health promotion and health security, and integrated care systems and population health. They require more funding, more authority, and stronger teams.
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Source: The King's Fund, 1 April 2021
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** Nathan Hodson of the BMJ takes a closer look at Singapore’s Health Promotion Board (HPB) to indicate what we might expect from the new Office for Health Promotion (OHP).
HPB has gained the attention of Matt Hancock partly because of its use of apps. One such app is the Healthy365 app, used to coordinate a range of public health programmes including the National Steps Challenge, in which Singaporeans aged over 17 use a phone or a Fitbit to measure their steps to accrue points to exchange for up to $40 (£22) of vouchers, and the Eat, Drink, Shop Healthy Challenge, which rewards users for healthy choices in supermarkets and restaurants with points convertible into shopping or transport vouchers.
Questions remain about whether the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) will take up some of HPB’s more expansive efforts like large advertising campaigns, work with faith groups, and coordination of community exercise sessions. There are also doubts about what DHSC will do without the low-hanging fruit that HPB was able to pick, like plain packaging on tobacco products.
Ultimately, according to Hodson, budget is key. The OHP budget will come out of DHSC, presumably from the gap left by the Public Health England budget, currently about £1 billion per year (around £18 per person). The Singaporean government spends $327 million on HPB each year, about $57.37 per person (roughly £42). With no new investment expected, this may have to change if the government wants to create a body to equal its Singaporean counterpart.
Source: BMJ, 1 April 2021
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** A meat delivery van driver has won £1 million on a National Lottery Scratchcard, bought as he popped into a shop to buy a vape to help him quit smoking.
John McFadden, 63-years-old from Southampton, said: “I knew I had to do something about my smoking. With the change from buying the vape, I bought a Scratchcard and took it home. When I started scratching it off, it said £50,000 under the first number and I thought ‘whoopee!’. I carried on and just kept seeing more and more £50,000s. I thought it was a lot but didn’t know what to believe.”
Mr McFadden plans to spend his winnings on moving closer to his three children and two grand-daughters and on exotic holidays.
Source: East London & West Essex Guardian, 4 April 2021
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** International
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** A new study published on Friday 2nd April 2021 has found that more than 60% of US adults who vape are interested in quitting. The study was published in JAMA Network Open by MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researchers using survey data from more than 30,000 adults from across the US.
Of the 30,000 plus adults surveyed, almost 2,000 established e-cigarette users were identified. This group was divided into former smokers, defined as those who had quit smoking more than 30 days ago, dual users, those smoking cigarettes in addition to using e-cigarettes, and never smokers, those who denied ever having smoked. Never smokers were the most likely to have tried to quit using e-cigarettes in the past year. However, a higher proportion of former smokers planned to quit (66%), compared with dual users (59%) and never smokers (55%), although these differences were not statistically significant.
Source: Scienmag, 2 April 2021
See also: JAMA Network - Interest in quitting e-cigarettes among adult e-cigarette users with and without cigarette smoking history ([link removed])
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