Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Prior of Brampton on 26 July 2016 (HL1172), what progress they have made in meeting the six policy objectives set out in Professor Sir Michael Marmot's final report <i>Fair Society, Healthy Lives</i>, published in February 2010.

A range of measures are in place. Safer maternity care: next steps towards the national maternity ambition sets out actions to achieve our national ambition to halve by 2030 the rates of stillbirths, neonatal deaths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth, and maternal deaths building on progress already made to improve the safety of maternity services. A copy is attached.

Public Health England (PHE)’s Best Start in Life 0-5 programme includes aims for: women fit for and experiencing a healthy pregnancy; every child ready to learn at two; every child ready for school at five; and a reduction in childhood obesity. PHE also focuses on health outcomes with significant inequalities and where rates are poor: oral health; unintentional injuries; breastfeeding; speech, language and communication; perinatal mental health; and monitoring and maintaining high immunisation rates.

Since 2014, PHE has been working to build capacity and competency for community-centred approaches within public health across England. In February 2015 PHE and NHS England published jointly A guide to community-centred approaches to health and wellbeing. This document introduces a ‘family’ of practical models that can be used by local government and partners to work with communities to achieve health outcomes, in line with the Marmot report. A copy is attached.

PHE’s resources, evidence and knowledge span a range of topics, and supports practical action at a local level to tackle health inequalities. This has influenced the recently updated National Institute of Health and Care Excellence guidance, Community engagement: improving health and wellbeing and reducing health inequalities, a copy of which is attached. More recently, PHE supported implementation of best practice, improved access to knowledge and evidence, supported learning and established an integrated approach across national partners.

Local government has lead responsibility for improving the health of local populations supported with more than £16 billion over the five years from 2015/16. This is in addition to National Health Service spending on our world-leading immunisation and screening programmes, and on other preventative activity including the world’s first national diabetes prevention programme. The Government has taken strong action to protect children from the damaging health effects of smoking and launched a plan to tackle childhood obesity.

Work is ongoing across Government to address some of the wider determinants of health, for example, through the Health and Work and Social Justice Green Papers. We are also contributing to the Department for Communities and Local Government’s Troubled Families Scheme.