ABSTRACT
Primary care organisations and their local public health consultants/specialists need to be engaged in ensuring local engagement particularly with local government partners, with whom coterminosity is desirable. There are vital roles for government – national and local – in public health across many major determinants of health. The white paper increases central funding for public health research from April 2006 and establishes a welcome new public health research initiative backed by projects focusing on effective health interventions and the National Prevention Research Initiative. All those thinking about use of resources need to have access to, and understand, a consistent cost-effectiveness framework. Such a framework would allow the comparison of the cost-effectiveness of different public health interventions within and across both risk factors and disease areas, including those directed towards the wider determinants of health. Workforce capacity planning must develop to encompass the wider public health workforce and the social care workforce.
