Issue - meetings

The Panel considered the report of the Cabinet Member for Community Wellbeing providing the Panel with an update on progress against the Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

Councillor Shields (Cabinet Member for Community Wellbeing), Dr Jason Horsley and Felicity Ridgway were in attendance and, with the consent of the Chair, addressed the meeting.

The Panel explored various aspects of the report including:

·  The performance of the City against the health measures set out in the report.  The Panel raised concerns at the number of measures that seemed to be falling short of target.  The Panel raised concerns in particular over a number of issues including smoking and obesity; 

·  How best to choose which health issue to target resources towards. The Panel discussed the balance of continuing to allocate funding to long term health issues, such as smoking, where a reduction had already been achieved against funding newer campaigns where there may be more readily achievable targets.  The Panel was told that an investigation was ongoing to assess the effectiveness of the anti-smoking contract;

·  How the most affective campaigns are designed effect behavioural change and that there is often a delay between the measures taken to affect change and the actual benefit of these changes being seen;

·  How the public health team were working effectively with some Council departments to ensure that public health concerns were considered when undertaking various projects, in particular the transport department, and that this was a good way of stretching limited resources to try and achieve health goals; and

·  The complexity of the data needed to assess the effectiveness of the measures taken. The Panel discussed the difficulties in collecting data that related to a quality of life measurement.

RESOLVED that the Panel noted the information within report portrayed an image of a City where a great deal of improvement was necessary. The positive aspects of the cross departmental working within the Council was also noted.