Issue - meetings

Dr Heather Grimbaldeston, Director of Public Health, will present on the Annual Public Health Report and a copy of her presentation is attached.

The Annual Public Health Report will be circulated to all Members of the Council on 3 September, please bring your copy with you to the meeting.

Dr Heather Grimbaldeston, Director of Public Health, presented her Annual Report.

There were 3 main areas on which to focus attention:

      Consequences of an ageing population – the Primary Care Trust had the fastest growing ageing population in the North West and this would result in an increase in conditions relating to ageing such as falls and fractures.;

      Health inequalities/differences – breastfeeding rates were lower than the national average and comparable areas.  This linked to childhood obesity were there were higher rates of overweight children aged 4-5 years.  The teenage pregnancy conception rate was lower than the England rate but there were “hotspot” wards in Crewe and Macclesfield;

      Wide gaps in life expectancy – there were wide variations across Cheshire East in life expectancy rates.  The biggest cause of death was through Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) such as heart disease and stroke which accounted for 36% of all deaths; 26% of deaths were premature and preventable if lifestyles were modified.  The second biggest cause of premature death was cancer with half of the cancers preventable with lifestyle modification.  There were issues with alcohol and some older people using alcohol to deal with loneliness.

Presentations had been made to the Local Area Partnerships highlighting relevant health issues. 

Dr Grimbaldeston made reference to Sir Michael Marmot’s review of health inequalities “Fair Society, Healthy Lives” which had a number of recommendations aimed at informing the strategic direction of relevant partners for the next ten years.  There were a number of policy directives including giving every child the best start in life and create and develop healthy and sustainable places and communities.

Chapter 6 of the Annual Report expanded on the Choose Well concept – this included starting to identify where waste in health services could occur both nationally and locally and suggested how waste could be avoided or reduced.  There was an emphasis on how all were “partners in health” and should work together to reduce unnecessary expenditure and manage demand to allow the most efficient and effective use of resources.  This included;

      medications - £2million worth of unwanted or unused prescribed medication was returned to community pharmacies with a cost of £60,000 to the PCT to incinerate returned medicines;

      alcohol – in the PCT area there were 22,228 alcohol related admissions to hospital between 2002 – 2006 and the cost to the PCT for alcohol related problems was £31.5 million.  It was estimated that alcohol was a factor in 35% of all Accident and Emergency cases during the week and 70% at weekends;

      sexual health – Chlamydia was the most commonly diagnosed Sexually Transmitted Infection for both men and women in the UK; almost 1 in 10 sexually active young people under the age of 25, who were tested, had Chlamydia.

During discussion of the presentation the following issues were raised:

      it was noted that Suicide prevention services was on the work programme of the Joint Scrutiny Committee;

      it was noted that in Chapter 3 reference was made to Chelford being in the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 69