Public Health England (PHE) has set out its seven priorities for the next five years to improve public health.
In a document From evidence into action: opportunities to protect and improve the nation's health published as the NHS set out its priorities for the next five years, PHE has set out the seven areas where it believes it can be most effective.
The seven areas are:
• tackling obesity particularly among children
• reducing smoking and stopping children starting
• reducing harmful drinking and alcohol-related hospital admissions
• ensuring every child has the best start in life
• reducing the risk of dementia, its incidence and prevalence in 65-75 year olds
• tackling the growth in antimicrobial resistance
• achieving a year-on-year decline in tuberculosis incidence
PHE has warned it in order for health and care to remain sustainable, people must be helped to stay healthy and not only be treated when they become ill.
There will also be a drive to ensure that all causes of premature death reduce, with only liver disease left as a major disease with increasing mortality, two of its major causes are alcohol and obesity.
To improve its ability to understand trends PHE plans to develop health trends forecasting, the document said "We aim to be the health equivalent of the Office of Budget Responsibility, with an authoritative analysis of the public's health in the long term".
Duncan Selbie, chief executive of Public Health England, said: "We have an ambition: for people of this country to live as well as possible, for as long as possible. But on current trends, we are going to fall short because we face an epidemic of largely preventable long-term diseases.
"We may be living longer, but we - and future generations - risk spending many of these extra years in poor health unless we do a better job of tackling major risks such as obesity, poor diet, physical inactivity, smoking, and excessive alcohol consumption.
"We have an opportunity, with the NHS 5 Year Forward View and the momentous return of public health to local authorities, to put the evidence into action."
