Formed 2013 Parent agency Department of Health | Superseding agency none Founded 2013 | |
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Website www.gov.uk/government/organisations/public-health-england Profiles | ||
Public health england one you
Public Health England (PHE) is an executive agency of the Department of Health in the United Kingdom that began operating on 1 April 2013. Its formation came as a result of reorganisation of the National Health Service (NHS) in England outlined in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. It took on the role of the Health Protection Agency, the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse and a number of other health bodies.
Contents
- Public health england one you
- Be he lthy be mobile partnerships public health england
- Structure
- Campaigns
- Criticism and other published comment
- References
Be he lthy be mobile partnerships public health england
Structure
Initially, aside from back office functions such as personnel and finance or management functions such as strategy and programme management, PHE has the following divisions:
Duncan Selbie is the Chief Executive.
Campaigns
PHE took over the responsibility for Be Clear on Cancer campaigns after it was created in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. Campaigns have been run on Lung Cancer, Bowel Cancer, Oesophago-gastric and Kidney & Bladder Cancer.
PHE is also responsible for Change4Life and ACT FAST.
In January 2014 it launched a new campaign against smoking called Smokefree Health Harms on television and billboards across England.
Criticism and other published comment
Public Health England has been criticised for its underweighting of mental health within its overall resourcing and agenda; in 2011 the Royal College of Psychiatrists stated its concern that there appeared to be "few, or no, commitments or resources within either the Department of Health or Public Health England to take the public mental health agenda forward."
The agency was criticised by Professor Martin McKee, in January 2014, who said that continuing health inequalities among London boroughs was a scandal and claimed coalition reforms had left it unclear who was supposed to analyse health data and tackle the problems highlighted.
The agency was criticised by Lancet for allegedly using weak evidence in a review of electronic cigarettes to endorse an estimate that e-cigarette use is 95% less hazardous than smoking. Lancet wrote "it is on this extraordinarily flimsy foundation that PHE based the major conclusion and message of its report". Lancet found this "raises serious questions not only about the conclusions of the PHE report, but also about the quality of the agency's peer review process." Authors of the PHE report subsequently published a document clarifying that their endorsement of the 95% claim did not stand on the single study criticized in the Lancet, but on their broad review of toxicological evidence. The agency has also been criticised for "serious questions about transparency and conflicts of interest" regarding this review, that PHE's response "did not even begin to address the various relationships and funding connections" in question, and that this "adds to questions about the credibility of the organisation’s advice".