Health and well-being - a matter of public health

Helping to improve the health and well-being of local people is a major part of our work.

To achieve this we employ public health specialists. This section of our website is dedicated to their work. The links on the left-hand menu bar take you to information about health on your street, staying healthy and long-term conditions.

You can find out about the work of our stop smoking advisors and Community Food and Health team, how we can help with substance misuse and the support we provide for people with long-term conditions such as asthma.

We asked our Public Health Director to help explain more about what public health is all about:

Q) What is public health?

A) "A lot of the work that we do is about changing people's health habits. We also have to make sure that the right services are in place to improve health. We have to look at and tackle the circumstances that can cause poor health, such as improving access to healthy food and opportunities to be physically active. That doesn't happen overnight. We can't do it on our own either. You make vital choices every day, which affect your health and possibly the health of your family and loved ones. What we are trying to do is to support you and your local community to make the right choices and to feel in control of your lives."

Q) How do you decide what services people need?

A) "One of the first things we have to do to help people to stay well and healthy is to find out what local people's health needs are. This helps us to put the right services and support in place. For example, we know that the Wakefield district has a higher number of obese children than the national average. If nothing is done about this, then more and more children will become overweight. This makes them more likely to be obese as an adult and to develop diabetes or other diseases. Armed with this knowledge, our Childhood Obesity Team works closely with families and our colleagues in education, school nursing and the council to understand why we have more obese children, and what we can do about it. As a result, we now have a number of different services and projects aimed at preventing, managing and treating childhood obesity.

"By gathering lots of information like this, about the health of local people we have developed a Health Inequalities Plan for the Wakefield district. This talks about what we plan to do to improve health across the district. We use different kinds of information, such as health statistics, feedback from patients and carers and views from staff and clinical experts. You can find out more about this in the 'Health on your street' section.

Q) How do you make sure that you are keeping up with what's going on nationally?

A) "As well as using local knowledge our work is also influenced by official government policies such as Choosing Health. This describes how we should be focusing on increasing people's healthy behaviour, and how we can help support people to make healthier and more informed choices about their health. We also work very closely with our partners to develop and deliver local public health strategies."