NHS Providers has launched a new report in its publication series Provider Voices, which promotes the views of leaders from a range of trusts and other parts of the service on some of the key issues facing the NHS today.

Public health: everyones’ business? addresses a topic which has never been more important nor more challenging. The report features 12 interviews that look at concerns including:

• promoting the public health role as we move towards accountable care
• dealing with the challenges of constrained funding
• harnessing digital technology
• developing the role of the public health clinician
• working to shape the wider determinants of health inequalities.

The report uses 12 interviews with NHS trust leaders, from the hospital, mental health and ambulance sectors, as well as academics, system leaders, local government representatives, and those with strategic responsibility for delivery and commissioning, to help gain a better understanding of NHS providers’ role in shaping and delivering public health and care.

In an overview, the director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery, says by its nature public health matters to us all: 

What links these interviews is a shared understanding that a focus on public health has never been more important, nor more challenging.

“What their words show is that there is a proliferation of ideas and perspectives. Some interviewees are population health advocates, others see the structured focus on the individual as key, while some promote prevention every step of the way.

“What links these interviews, however, is a shared understanding that a focus on public health has never been more important, nor more challenging.”

The interviews were carried out by Andy Cowper. He spoke to:

Wayne Bartlett-Syree – Director of strategy and sustainability at East of England Ambulance  Service NHS Trust

David Buck – Senior fellow, Public health and inequalities, the King’s Fund

Dr Maureen Dalziel – Chair, Barking Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust

Dr Jeanelle de Gruchy – Vice-President, the Association of Directors of Public Health

Graham Jackson – co-chair, NHS Clinical Commissioners

Professor Sir Michael Marmot- Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London

Dame Gill Morgan – Chair, NHS Providers

Professor Chris Packham – Associate Medical Director, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

Dr Arif Rajpura – Director of Public Health, Blackpool council

Duncan Selbie – Chief Executive, Public Health England

Sir David Sloman – Chief Executive, Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust

Professor Heather Tierney-Moore OBE – Chief Executive, Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust

The next report in the Provider Voices series will be published in the new year.

Read an overview by NHS Providers, director of policy and strategy, Saffron Cordery.