On the 16 and 17 September Public Health England held their annual conference at the University of Warwick. ISEH Development Director Matt James attended the conference which was about bringing together all aspects of public health so that scientific advances, diagnostic techniques, knowledge from the field and online tools are available to those working to improve health and wellbeing.
The link between obesity and rising healthcare costs was the key theme of NHS England Chief Executive Simon Stevens’ speech at the conference. With some experts predicting that the NHS could face a funding shortfall of £30bn by 2022, the health service is clearly under considerable financial pressure.
Nearly one in five secondary school-aged children are now obese, as are a quarter of adults (up from 15 per cent 20 years ago). This is leading to a huge rise in avoidable illness and disability, including cases of Type 2 diabetes, which Diabetes UK estimate already costs the NHS around £9 billion a year. In response, Stevens called for a “radical upgrade in prevention and public health” to improve “the health of millions of children, the sustainability of the NHS, and the economic prosperity of Britain.”
“Obesity is the new smoking, and it represents a slow-motion car crash in terms of avoidable illness and rising health care costs,” he said. “If as a nation we keep piling on the pounds around the waistline, we’ll be piling on the pounds in terms of future taxes needed just to keep the NHS afloat.”
In an NHS ‘Five Year Forward View‘ due to be published on 21 October, the NHS will set out a range of initiatives to improve public health. These are likely to include:
- Greater investment in disease prevention
- The establishment of community health ambassadors
- More support for the 1.3 million-strong NHS workforce to stay healthy
- Giving more powers to councils to make local decision on issues affecting obesity and public health such as tobacco, alcohol and fast food
Also under consideration are the creation of financial incentives to employers who implement approved workplace health programmes, in an effort to reduce the cost to employers and taxpayers of sickness-related absence, currently estimated at £22bn per year.
Other conference speakers highlighted a range of factors that can also help to increase physical activity and reduce obesity. These included establishing walking and cycling routes, creating targeted health promotion programmes for children and young people, and the important role of Health and Wellbeing Boards in supporting healthy communities.
One of the ISEH’s principal aims is to gain greater understanding of how treatments developed for elite athletes can be ‘translated’ to benefit public health.This involves gathering researching the large-scale impacts of the many biological, behavioural and psycho-social processes that influence population groups over the course of a lifetime. Working with UCL, one of the ISEH’s partners, we have established a number of projects to understand the broader impact of exercise and activity throughout a person’s life and on the population.
The ISEH is also currently working very closely with UCL's Physical Activity Research Group (PARG), and with Camden Council on the Camden Active Spaces Project.
For further details on our Population Health research please contact research.education@iseh.co.uk
Further information on the 2014 Public Health England conference.