A response to the public health white paper

We welcome the Coalition Government’s strategy for public health, Healthy Lives, Healthy People. We particularly welcome the attention paid to taking a life course approach to public health, the focus on social determinants of health inequalities, and the linkages made between health, wellbeing and mental health.

The idea that local communities have a key role to play in determining the agenda for and ways of promoting public health is in line with the argument we have consistently made that local knowledge needs to be at the heart of policy development and practice.

Our response to the public health strategy is based on this general agreement with the Government’s overall vision for public health. However, as organisations working with racialised groups, with an in-depth understanding of the problems and potentials of these groups, we feel that there needs to be far more clarity about several key concepts, assumptions and proposals within the White Paper.

Our response, firstly, engages with some of these key concepts: health inequalities, individual responsibility and behaviours, local leadership and the idea of localism. Secondly, we examine the contribution of the voluntary sector organisations working with minority ethnic communities and the factors affecting their engagement with ‘the big society’.

We then make some recommendations on the specific proposals within the White Paper.