Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department plans to produce a strategy for healthy living for the NHS.

There is already a strategy in place for healthy living for the National Health Service. Over the past few years, NHS organisations have been encouraged to improve the health and wellbeing of their staff through the implementation of five high impact changes (HICs).

The HICs are: developing local evidence-based improvement plans; with strong visible leadership; supported by improved management capability; with access to better, local high-quality accredited occupational health services; and where all staff are encouraged and enabled to take more personal responsibility.

The above work has since been complemented by the launch, last year, of NHS England’s £5 million initiative to improve NHS staff health and wellbeing which includes “a major drive for improved NHS staff health, led by a group of leading NHS hospital, mental health, ambulance, community and clinical commissioning group (CCG) employers, in partnership with NHS Employers and Public Health England”.

This year, NHS England introduced an employer incentive scheme, a CQUIN (Commissioning for Quality and Innovation) challenging NHS organisations to improve the health and wellbeing of their staff through the introduction of employer led schemes. From 2017 to 2019, a two year CQUIN sets a goal for NHS trusts to ‘Improve the support available to NHS Staff to help promote their health and wellbeing in order for them to remain healthy and well’.

NHS trusts agree their plans to improve the health of their workforce with their local CCG which are best placed to respond to specific inquiries.