Judy Viitanen has been looking at news items on the reports from a group of independent experts, which make recommendations to the Secretary of State on how he should improve the health and wellbeing of the population.

‘Enabling effective delivery of health and wellbeing’ explores the current opportunities and barriers within the system where changes could be made to deliver a more effective service and calls for a greater focus on tackling the four biggest behavioural factors to preventable disease - tobacco use, physical inactivity, excess alcohol consumption and poor diet. Crucially, they believe that these changes can be delivered without expense to the NHS.

One of the cornerstones of the strategy proposed by the report is an enhanced role for general practice.  The authors advise that general practice should be central to supporting changes to behavioural risk factors and mental wellbeing, for example through weight management services and stop smoking services. However, in order to deliver these services the authors recognise that this will not be possible without an enhanced role for pharmacists, nursing and other practice staff. To support this, they recommend that the Choose and Book system should be expanded to include a directory of approved services for the major behavioural risk factors and psychological therapies to help direct GPs and other health professionals to where evidence-based services are available.

The report also advocates a new integrated commissioning structure for health and wellbeing. They note that this will need to identify explicitly how the NHS and local partners commission jointly to deliver improved health and wellbeing, building on strengthened local joint strategic needs assessment.

This makes good sense to PRimage. What’s your view?