Public Health England

Public Health England

File:Public Health England.png
Agency overview
Formed	2013
Preceding agency	Health Protection Agency, National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse
Superseding agency	none
Jurisdiction	England
Headquarters	London SE1
Minister responsible	footnotes
Deputy Minister responsible	footnotes
Agency executive	footnotes
Parent agency	Department of Health
Child agency	footnotes
Key document	footnotes
Website	www.gov.uk/government/organisations/public-health-england

Public Health England (PHE) is an executive agency of the Department of Health in the United Kingdom that began operating on 1 April 2013. Its formation came as a result of reorganisation of the National Health Service (NHS) in England outlined in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. It took on the role of the Health Protection Agency, the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse and a number of other health bodies.

Mission and resources

PHE's mission is "to protect and improve the nation’s health and to address inequalities". It employs 5,500 staff, who are mostly scientists, researchers and public health professionals. Some 10 of these staff focus on mental health.

Structure

Initially, aside from the usual corporate back office functions, such as personnel, and finance, or management functions such as strategy, and programme management, it has the following divisions:

• Health protection:
  • Chemical, radiative, and environmental hazards
    • Research
    • National poisons database
    • Services for those working with hazardous materials
    • Harm reduction in relation to polluted environments
    • Operations
  • Field epidemiology
  • Contagious disease surveillance and control
  • Major incident response
• Health improvement:
  • Substance misuse treatment programmes
  • Health promotion (such as healthy diet or anti-smoking marketing)
  • Health screening programmes (such as cancer screening, STD checks, cardiovascular disease screening, etc.)
  • Reducing health inequalities
  • Specialist healthcare commissioning (in relation to major incidents, etc.)
  • National Cancer Intelligence Network (and other Networks)
• Knowledge and Information
  • Substance misuse treatment monitoring
  • Disease registration
  • Research and development
• Operations:
  • Microbiology unit
    • Microbe production
    • Research
    • References
    • Specialist services
  • Regional units (South / Midlands / North / London)
    • Preparation and response against major incidents
    • Local centres (Several centres per regional unit, except London)
      • Local health protection
      • Substance misuse treatment services (over more than one centre)
      • Local specialist commissioning (in relation to major incidents, etc.) and advice

Duncan Selbie is the Chief Executive.

Campaigns

PHE took over the responsibility for Be Clear on Cancer campaigns after it was created in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. Campaigns have been run on on Lung Cancer, Bowel Cancer, Oesophago-gastric and Kidney & Bladder Cancer.

PHE is also responsible for Change4Life and ACT FAST.

In January 2014 it launched a new campaign against smoking called Smokefree Health Harms on television and billboards across England.

In February 2015, it launched it's most ambitious project yet, a wide-ranging campaign to publicise the dangers of eating daffodils. Studies that had determined that unintentional consumption of toxic perennials was a growing problem, projected to become one of the UK's leading killers by 2025. The launch of the campaign was well-received, both by a grateful public, many of who were shocked to discover their own ignorance of the fact that flowers are not supposed to be eaten, and politicians on all sides of the house, who unanimously pledged to give them even more taxpayer's money in recognition of the importance of this vital work.

Criticism and other published comment

Public Health England has been criticised for its underweighting of mental health within its overall resourcing and agenda; in 2011 the Royal College of Psychiatrists stated its concern that there appeared to be "few, or no, commitments or resources within either the Department of Health or Public Health England to take the public mental health agenda forward."

The agency was criticised by Professor Martin McKee, in January 2014, who said that continuing health inequalities among London boroughs was a scandal and claimed coalition reforms had left it unclear who was supposed to analyse health data and tackle the problems highlighted.