Coronavirus: latest information and advice
What is public health?
Public Health is about helping people to stay healthy, and protecting them from threats to their health. In Buckinghamshire we want everyone to be able to make healthier choices, regardless of their circumstances, and to minimise the risk and impact of ill health.
The transfer of the responsibility for public health from the NHS to local government in 2013 was one of the most significant extensions of local government powers and duties in a generation and offers a unique opportunity to improve the lives of our residents.
What do we do?
Buckinghamshire County Council commissions a range of services that help people lead healthier lives. For example; services that reduce the risk of poor development in babies, keep school children healthy, help build emotional resilience in our young people and reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, dementia, diabetes, falls, obesity and sexually transmitted infections.
Our mission is to support people to take control of their own health whatever their age and to create the right conditions for people to thrive.
Key Reports
- Director of Public Health's Annual Report (DPHAR)
- Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA). More information on the JSNA and what it is can be found here.
Continued professional development
In public health, the overall aim of continuing professional development is to ensure that those who work in the field develop and maintain the necessary knowledge, skills and attributes to practise effectively and work towards improving the health of the population. CPD is a professional obligation for all public health professionals. Three categories of public health workers are widely accepted as constituting the public health workforce:
- Public Health specialists: consultants in public health and specialists in public health who work at a strategic or senior management level or at a senior level of scientific expertise to influence the health of the whole population or of a selected community.
- Public health practitioners: those who spend a major part, or all, of their time in public health practice e.g. public health information analyst, oral health promoter, smoking cessation coordinator, health visitor etc.
- Wider public health: most people, including managers, have a role in health improvement and reducing health inequalities although they may not recognise this, including: teachers, social workers, local business leaders, transport engineers, town planners, housing officers, regeneration managers and so on.
Please see the link below to the Oxford School of Public Health and the links to number of learning opportunities. They provide an insight into the range of courses available to support public health development. It is intended as a reference document only. Signposting to a course from this document does not imply that financial support to attend one of these courses will be made available to you. This is not a definitive directory of all the courses which are available – it is constantly being developed and updated.
http://www.oxsph.org/courses.html
http://www.oxsph.org/download/Public%20Health%20Course%20Directory_June2015.pdf