Dr Peter Tiplady, Chairman Committee for Public Health Medicine and Community Health
Speech for 2005 ARM
27 June 2005
Chairman/RB
This has been an eventful year for the specialty of public health, its workforce and for the Committee which it has been my privilege to lead.
In the last year we have seen public health move to the top of the political and health agendas culminating with the publication of the Government’s White Paper for England: Choosing Health. We join the Association in backing the Government’s plans, particularly in the areas of smoking, obesity and sexual health.
On smoking we welcome the fact that the measures to be introduced will help people to stop smoking, combat diseases caused by smoking and save thousands of lives. However, we do remain disappointed that an overall ban on smoking in all enclosed public places has not been introduced. The hope remains that the recently released consultation on how legislation on smoke-free enclosed public places would work will show that the loopholes and difficulties in framing legislation means that an overall ban is the only way forward. We urge the new Secretary of State and Government to come to this conclusion and we look forward to working with the Association in responding to this consultation.
With regard to sexual health we welcome the launch of a full scale sexual health campaign, increased provision of Chlamydia screening and a proposal for faster access to sexual health clinics which we hope will begin to tackle the rising rate of sexually transmitted diseases. While in terms of obesity, any move to have better labelling and restriction of junk food advertising has our wholehearted support.
The Committee has opened up positive dialogue with the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Fiona Adshead, as well as the Healthcare Commission. We plan to work closely with both in looking at how PCTs implement public health targets outlined in the White Paper’s delivery plan.
In recent weeks we have become concerned about PCT reorganisations and the effect that this is having on Directors of Public Health. It appears that in many cases Directors of Public Health are being displaced due to reorganisations and are being prevented from seeking redundancy and offered consultant posts instead. We firmly believe that redundancy should be an option for these Directors and that they should not have their status downgraded. The fact is that their role is very different from that of a consultant which would not for example have corporate responsibility for a directorate, health of the population or indeed receive a supplement which recognises the higher status of a Director in Public Health. We intend to find out what the situation is nationally before we approach the Department of Health with regard to these serious human resource implications.
Our trainees committee, under the assured leadership of Justin Varney, has led the way in campaigning for the continuation of out of hours on call work for trainees. There has been concern that this may be phased out in some deaneries and the results of a nationwide survey of trainees that we conducted found that more that 80% were on an out of hours rota with two thirds of them receiving regular training from their health protection department. We feel that this is valuable work and reducing it could have a detrimental impact on recruitment as well as undermining expertise in emergency procedures and health protection.
As you will be aware there was a merger of public health and hospital doctor terms and conditions three years ago. In this time the Committee has actively represented its consultant body in transferring onto the new consultant contract but following this it has become clear that the Committee’s status as a craft committee with delegated powers to negotiate can no longer be justified. As a result we have decided to take the lead and undertake a review of our current structure. This session we have also focussed on representing our other constituencies such as trainees and community health doctors and enabled them to have greater access into the decision and policy making process.
Finally, I would like to give my thanks to my Deputy Chairmen, Steve Watkins, Kailash Agrawal and Chris Spencer Jones for their steadfast and consistent support throughout the year. I can pledge to all members that the BMA will continue to fight on your behalf for a public health system that we can be proud of and feel motivated to work in to improve the health of our populations.
Chairman, I move…
