Teams: Healthcare Public Health

Healthcare Public Health ensures that our health services are the most effective, most efficient and equally accessible.

Good health and well-being are about more than healthcare. A good start in life, education, decent work and housing and strong, supportive relationships all play their part. Economic prosperity is integral to closing the health gap. It can create jobs for local people, bring benefits to their children, help their family to stay well and as people get older, help them to live at home for longer. Good health is also a product of the decisions we make about what we consume and the way we live our lives.

Good population health outcomes, including reducing health inequalities, rely not just on health protection and health improvement, but on the quality and accessibility of healthcare services provided by the NHS.

It is time to explore how we can adapt our tried and tested methods to improve the health of the most vulnerable and the most disadvantaged. This will depend on working with others to improve health across the system – sharing knowledge and experience with those who have the power to address the external factors which predispose some people to poor health..

HealthCare Public Health works to the three key areas of planning, procuring and monitoring health care services, underpinned by health needs assessment, health technology assessment, service design/re-design, quality improvement and assurance, and evaluation.

We will take advantage of new technologies and use digital techniques and ‘big data’ to protect and improve health, analysing and presenting our information in a way that people can readily engage with.  Examples of Healthcare Public Health function is to:

• appraise the evidence to support the development of clinical prioritisation policies at individual and population level
• identifying vulnerable populations and local health inequalities and advising on commissioning to meet their health needs
• providing specialist input into the development of evidence based care pathways and quality indicators to improve patient experience.

Current Strands

Starting Well

To improve the health of pregnant women, babies and young children to ensure every child has the best possible start in life and is ready to succeed to lead longer, healthier lives.  The scope of this work extends across:

• Pre-natal & Maternal Health (Maternal & Infant Nutrition)
• Children & Young People (Early Interventions and Early Years)
• Child Protection & Child Health Commissioner

Living Well

We have a role and responsibility to combine efforts within our communities towards ensuring prevention and early intervention for all adults over 16+ years.  This includes:

• Prevention: influencing conditions to improve health e.g. housing, employment and training, economy, etc.
• Early Diagnosis – promoting awareness and service equality e.g. Detect Cancer Early, Suicide Prevention, screening programmes, etc.
• Treatment – establishing and monitoring the management of service delivery around long-term conditions and co-morbidities e.g. Managed Care Networks, service redesign and parity of care.

Ageing Well

Improving the health of our population to enable more years to be spent in good health.  This includes:

• Timely Interventions – wellbeing and maintaining good healthy behaviours
• Community Partnerships – working with local communities to examine what works e.g. social isolation and loneliness and improving care in the community
• Mental Health – providing strategic direction for future dementia care and mental health service redesign

Policy

Ensuring national standards are met and embedded into local care.  This includes:

• Leadership – e.g. partnership working to ensure national policy is embedded into local practice
• Commissioning & Service Planning – e.g. conducting needs assessments to agreed priorities and resource allocation

Future Priorities

As such, there has never been a better time to consider how digital technology can play a pivotal role. Service delivery in rural areas, and particularly issues around accessibility continue to present challenges for health and social care services.

Literature suggests that Assistive Technologies (ATs) may improve quality of life, extend length of community residence, improve physical and mental health status, delay the onset of serious health problems and reduce family and care-giver burden.  However, most telehealth innovations struggle to survive beyond the pilot stage, despite being medically and technically viable solutions. Explanations for this failure identify cultural, organisational and workforce barriers to implementation.

The Public Health Division recognises how AT contributes to health services research and continues to examine and explore how rural public health and social care institutions can sustainably adopt AT telehealth innovations whenever possible.

Recently completed projects in this area includes:

• mPower – supporting adults to live well, safely and independently in their own home via Community Navigator and digital support service.

• IT4Anxiety –  use of innovative technology solutions to reduce the anxiety of people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer‘s disease with partners across NW Europe.

• ChatPal – developing chatbot technologies to support and promote mental health and wellbeing in remote communities of Northern Europe.

• Others – Sleepio digital CBT for insomnia TEC project

For further information on above contact Project Lead:

Email: martin.malcolm2@nhs.scot
Tel: 01851 708011