To receive a presentation from the Director of Public Health.

The Director of Public Health introduced the presentation which had been circulated with the agenda. During the pandemic the main focus of the Board had been on tackling the issues created by COVID 19 but now was the time to begin to look at the recovery following the pandemic and what the Board’s priorities would be. Prior to the pandemic the Board had been focused on reducing inequalities in healthy life expectancy across the borough and the presentation provided the latest data available. The Director of Public Health then introduced the Public Health Intelligence Analyst who had been working on Trafford’s data sets.

The Public Health Intelligence Analyst then went through the slides. The Healthy life expectancy was increasing for both men and women and was among the highest nationally, although work needed to be done with Trafford CCG to measure the difference between different areas of the Borough. Trafford had seen a reduction in the number of smokers and there had been a large reduction in smoking among routine and manual workers. For alcohol related hospitalisation and premature mortality rates due to liver disease Trafford were worse than the national average and the worst out of their statistical neighbours. Between 2015 and 2018 Trafford had started to see a reduction in premature mortality for liver disease. 

Trafford performed well against the national average for the prevalence of overweight and obesity. Trafford was statistically similar to the national average for physical inactivity in 2018/19 and Trafford had seen reductions since 2015. Prevalence of obesity amongst year six children showed that those in the most deprived quintile were twice as likely to be obese as children in the least obese quintile. In the reception years those in the most deprived quintile were still twice as likely to be obese as those in the least deprived quintile.

Trafford performed very well in terms of cervical screening both nationally and against statistical neighbours. Trafford mortality rates for preventable cancers had been steadily declining since 2001. Trafford had a lower rate of suicide than the national average and also performed well against their statistical neighbours. However, people with severe mental health issues in Trafford were five times more likely to die prematurely than the general population. The rate of employment for people in contact with a secondary mental health service had dropped from 71% in 2015/16 to 67.7% in 2017/18.

The Director of Public Health noted the improvement in the reduction in smoking was great news and now had to do some work to in due the reason for those reductions and to see how COVID had impacted those figures. There was increased concern around alcohol abuse and levels of inactivity given the impact of COVID. The improvement around rates of cervical screening was positive news as this was something that the public health team had been working on with colleagues from Trafford CCG and it appeared as though the work was having an impact. The inequalities information was still of great concern and need to concentrate on reducing the inequalities that were shown in the data and to investigate the impact of inequality in the other areas. While the levels of premature death for people suffering from mental health issues had reduced there was still a very large gap between them and the general population.

Following the presentation Councillor Blackburn asked whether the smoking figures included electronic cigarettes. The Director of Public Health responded that the figure were for cigarette smoking and did not include electronic cigarettes. Councillor Blackburn followed up by asking whether it was known what was in electronic cigarette liquid and whether it was regulated. The Director for Public Health responded that the electronic cigarettes that were used in the stop smoking campaign were controlled and while she did not know all of the substances in the electronic cigarette liquid all the data showed that it was far safer than smoking although it may have its own risks and should be used as an aid to quitting rather than an alternative. 

The Chair of Health Watch Trafford was particularly concerned by the statistics around mental health especially as this was very likely to be exacerbated by the pandemic. The Director of Public Health responded that even before the pandemic the UK had some of the worst mental health in Europe and the team were continuing to focus on ways to improve the wellbeing of those with mental health issues which included aiding in the development of the mental health strategy.

The Chair of the Trafford Strategic Safeguarding Board then asked about the statistics on mental health, what was considered as serious mental health issues, and how was Trafford looking to support those people. The Director of Public Health Confirmed that serious was defined as severe and enduring and that was where the differences in education, employment, and life expectancy were being seen. It was an ambition of the Health and Wellbeing Board to reduce the impact of having a severe mental illness and while it was hoped that Trafford could reduce the prevalence of severe mental health conditions the data showed that the prevalence was increasing.

RESOLVED:

1)    That the update be noted.