PHA Cymru Mission, Values and Vision

Our Mission

Through our members, activities and co-operation with others, to be a unifying and powerful voice for the public's health and well-being in Wales, focusing on the need to eliminate inequalities in health, to promote sustainable development and to combat anti-health forces.

Our Values and Principles

In keeping with this holistic and ecological approach to health, PHA Cymru promotes values and principles which inform all its work in Wales:

• Human Rights, Equity and Social Justice: Everyone, irrespective of gender, age, social class, ethnicity, (dis)ability or sexuality, should have access to resources and opportunities to support an acceptable quality of life and health and enjoy equal civil, political and social rights, including protection from avoidable threats to health.
• Sustainable Development: Human economic and social development needs to ensure a viable ecological balance.
• Peace, Respect and Tolerance: Violence and war present major threats to human life and physical and mental health and eco-systems. Tolerance and respect for different cultures, races and groups and peaceful ways of resolving human differences must be cultivated universally.
• Empowerment: This involves strengthening people's capacity to self-determination and to make informed choices.
• Responsibility and Accountability for Health: Responsibility must be both individual and collective. It encompasses individuals, families, communities, organisations, business and government. Each of us has a role to promote public health and to be accountable for the health implications of our actions.
• Co-operation: Public health can only be secured through co-operation and partnership.

 

Our Three Pillars of Action

Pillar 1 - Advocacy

• Raising awareness of public health issues across all sectors and levels of society
• Highlighting how committed individuals, communities and organisations can contribute to public health objectives
• Training and education through the national curriculum, and for the wider public health workforce, including the voluntary sector

Pillar 2 - Campaigning

• Lobbying local, sub regional, national and UK government on major public health issues
• Influencing public heath policy through collaborative inquiry and in the media

Pillar 3 - Congress

• Commitment to a model of public engagement
• Collaborative inquiry to inform the policy development process at local and national levels
• Organisation of the annual Wales Public Health Congress, which brings people at grassroots level across Wales together to address public health issues, promote research and identify issues for campaign and advocacy

 

OUR VISION FOR PUBLIC HEALTH IN 2015

For our vision we interpret the term public health in terms of health and wellbeing, accepting the WHO definition of health as a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, not merely the absence of infirmity or disease. And as a guiding framework we have adopted the principles set out in the 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and in particular the five underlying themes of building healthy public policy, strengthening community action, creating supportive environments, developing personal skills and reorienting health services.

The Key elements of our Vision are:

• Joined up thinking and integrated action to promote health and wellbeing at central, local and, most crucially, at community level. The framework for such thinking and action will e the local Health, Social care and Wellbeing Strategy and its associated local Community Strategy which will provide a coordinated and total systems approach to : the provision of healthcare and social care; tackling the key lifestyle factors of diet, physical, mental and social exercise, smoking, substance misuse and sexual health; and to taking action on the wider environmental, social and political determinants. Housing will be a key focus of this total systems approach. Health Impact Assessment will underpin decision making at all levels. And, all elements of the health, social care and wellbeing planning and delivery system will, ideally, be under local democratic control, a necessary if not sufficient condition for local empowerment.
• The key to joined up thinking and integrated action at community level is community empowerment though appropriately funded community development and devolution of real power and responsibility for as many aspects of health, social care and wellbeing as possible. he cornerstones for delivering the health, social care and wellbeing agenda for communities are fourfold:

1. the primary care team enhanced to provide a wide range of services beyond the traditional healthcare role, both local authority and voluntary sector, either directly on site, for example Welfare Rights Advice, or on an information providing / signposting basis
2. the local secondary or other appropriate school, fulfilling the Community/Village College role by providing life long learning and leisure and recreation facilities to the local population.
3. a community health, social care and wellbeing network coordinated by the local community / town council(s) which will be given specific responsibilities for local health, social care and wellbeing.
4. the provision of training and resource support for carrying out local health impact assessments and also aimed at meeting the learning needs created from  such   assessments for individuals and communities. This support will also be required for implementing  local health, social care and well-being improvement.  Monitoring and evaluation for effectiveness will be crucial.

• The lead health and wellbeing leadership role at this level will be fulfilled by a new cadre of public health nurse/health visitor adopting a community development model and working closely with the local primary care team.

 

• At county level responsibility for the health and wellbeing agenda and strategy will lie with a smaller number (say 12) of all purpose county councils which will have amalgamated with their coterminous Local Health Boards and will thus have assumed the primary and community health services commissioning functions.

The secondary care commissioning role of former Local Health Boards will be fulfilled at regional level by some form of Strategy Health Authority with input from the constituent new style all purpose county councils.

 

• The leadership role at county level would be held by a member of the new cadre of medical and non medical public health specialists acting as Director for Health and Wellbeing, based in the local authority and reporting directly to the Chief Executive and through them to the Cabinet. Importantly the Director would have no service delivery responsibilities and would act as an advisor / information specialist supplying expertise on needs assessment, evidence based services and health and wellbeing impact assessment / inequalities impact assessment.
• At central level there will be a new Directorate in WAG, the Health and Wellbeing Directorate reporting to the First Minister and headed by a new post of National Director for Health and Wellbeing. This will be distinct from the Health and Social Care Directorate which will have responsibility specifically for the running and development of healthcare and social care services. It will no longer have a responsibility for public health which will pass to the new Health and Wellbeing Directorate.
• To provide independent professional advice, there will be a team of Chief Officers representing the main health, social care and wellbeing disciplines ie medicine, nursing, allied health professions , social work, housing and environmental health, all of equal status.
• The existing Public Health Teams will necessarily be part of new style local government and the new cadre of public health nurse / health visitor will be part of the Team too. At regional level and linked to the local universities there will be a public health support team forming part of a more regionalised public health organisation. The role of the Universities will be greater than at present as they represent a major health and wellbeing research and scholarship resource which is barely tapped. This will however require a cultural shift from the present competitive approach adopted by academic institutions and departments to one of mutual support and cooperation.
• The health, social care and wellbeing strategy development process must be bottom up rather than top down. Thus all future health, social care and wellbeing strategies at county and national level will be derived from community health social care and wellbeing strategies formulated by the local communities.
• The Wales Public Health Congress and its associated NGO Health and Wellbeing Network will form an important element of a statutory health and wellbeing advisory structure supporting WAG and the new all-purpose county councils in their health and wellbeing promoting roles.
• The most important developments without which the proposed restructuring will have little impact, are Organisational Development and Community Development. The former to ensure that all staff of all elements of the health, social care and wellbeing work force, including in the voluntary sector and in the private sector, are fully conversant with the concept and delivery of the health, social care and wellbeing agenda and their role within it. The latter because community development is the only way in which individuals and the communities within which they live and work will ever be able to have enough control over their lives and environments to take on the personal and community responsibility inherent in the agenda.
• Key to both organisational development and community development is readily available, easy to understand, quality assured and, most important of all, consistent, information. The provision of such information is central to our vision.
• Crucial also is the school setting starting at nursery level and running right through to school leaving. And key to this is the development and delivery of a coordinated PSE programme, with a major health promotion element, which must have equal standing in the curriculum as the traditional academic subjects.
• Also important, particularly as a means of reaching men with health promotion and health, social care and wellbeing messages, is the workplace. To make this happen will require the development of a health and wellbeing at work network to provide expertise and support from the large statutory sector employers such as the county council and the NHS Trusts to the many SME's which are not able to provide this for themselves. A new arena for partnership working.
• And last, but not least, is the challenge of making each healthcare and social care setting, and each health and social care encounter an opportunity for relevant health promotion / health education activities. Community pharmacies will have a major role in this programme as will Housing Associations, Independent sector health and social care providers, health and social care recruitment agencies and Trade Unions/ Professional Organisations.

PHA Cymru Executive Committee
June 2005.