Key announcements

Due to maintenance, some of our online forms and systems will be unavailable from 6:00am on Saturday 30 March to 7:00am on Monday 1 April. We are sorry for any inconvenience. To find out more about the section 114 notice, visit our section 114 page

What do we do

The Public Health Division is structured around six core teams:

  • Deputy Director: PR & Communications, Bolder Healthier, Behavioural Science
  • Healthy Behaviours and Healthy Communities: Inequalities team, People team, Food team, Communities team
  • Life course Children and Young People: Children, Young People and Families team
  • Life course Adults and Older People: Adults team, Older People team
  • Knowledge, Evidence and Governance: Knowledge team, Governance team, Evidence team, PHM team
  • Health Protection and Environmental Public Health: Health Protection teams, Built Environment team, Places team and Health in All Policies team

Deputy Director Public Health:

Leads work on

  • Business Planning, Assurance, and Internal Business Unit Relations
  • Workforce Development
  • Behavioural Science
  • Communications and Engagement

Healthy Behaviours and Healthy Communities:

  • Leads work through the People team on mental health and wellbeing and suicide prevention, delivered through the Creating a Mentally Healthy City Forum and Suicide Prevention Advisory Group. Provides connection to the Community Safety Partnership to ensure the health and wellbeing of those on the periphery of the criminal justice system
  • Lead work through the Communities team on understanding health and wellbeing and inequalities in different communities of identity and interest in Birmingham, led through the development of community health profiles, which are short evidence summaries focusing on specific communities of interest. These are based on religion, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation. This supports the Public Health Division’s work to improve the understanding of the diverse communities of Birmingham
  • Lead work through the Inequalities team on understanding and responding to health inequalities linked to wider inequalities such as poverty and housing, led through the Creating a City Without Inequalities Forum and projects including the Birmingham Poverty Truth Commission and the Birmingham and Lewisham African and Caribbean Health Inequalities Review

Life course Children and Young People:

  • Lead work on the commissioned mandated public health services relating to children and young people’s health and wellbeing. This includes:
    • The healthy child programme an evidenced-based universal programme for children aged 0 to 19 years. It identifies the interventions and services children and families need to receive to help achieve their best health and wellbeing outcomes
    • Our 0 to 5 years services delivered by Birmingham Forward Steps which is a partnership of organisations providing Health Visiting and Children Centre Services
    • Our 5 to 19 years services delivered by Birmingham School Health Support Service: Birmingham Community Healthcare including delivery of the National Child Measurement Programme
    • Vision screening for 4 to 5-year-old children helping to identify impaired sight enabling timely intervention
  • Lead on increasing Healthy Start uptake. Healthy Start supports pregnant women and their families to eat well and get the vitamins they need for healthy development
  • Lead on children and families access to weight management support
  • Contribute to work around reducing infant mortality

Life course Adults and Older People:

  • Lead work on the commissioned mandated public health services relating to adult health and wellbeing. Helping the adult population in Birmingham improve their health and protect themselves from threats to their health and wellbeing. It achieves this by delivering some of the mandated services through the Public Health Grant
    • Providing access to sexual health services
    • Ensuring that NHS commissioners receive the public health advice they need
    • Encouraging NHS Health Check assessments
  • Lead on work such as smoking cessation, adult weight management and driving forward Fast Track Cities+, which are vital to improving adult health, wellbeing and reducing health inequalities. The Adults team, work with NHS commissioners to align prevention and healthcare pathways across the Birmingham and Solihull

Knowledge, Evidence and Governance:

  • Lead on the development of the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA). The JSNA assesses the current and future health and social care needs of the local community and is a statutory duty of the local authority, together with the Integrated Care Board, under the Health and Wellbeing Board
  • Lead on a programme of deep dives agreed with the Health and Wellbeing Board to provide the evidence base on specific topics to inform decisions and actions
  • Lead on the co-ordination and publication of the Director of Public Health’s Annual independent report
  • Lead on in-depth data analysis and insights, using routine and other data sets, and leading a population health management programme
  • Lead work to support the Health and Wellbeing Board and monitoring the impact of the Health and Wellbeing Board Strategy

Health Protection & Environmental Public Health, including the health protection specialist public health response:

  • Lead work on health protection issues such as immunisation and outbreak control, led through the Health Protection Forum
  • Lead work through the Place team on physical activity and food, delivered through the Creating a Healthy Food City Forum and the Creating an Active City Forum
  • Lead work on environmental public health issues, contributing to the wider work of the council and its partners on climate change, the built environment and the green environment
  • Lead work on the public health input to the work on Covid Recovery across the council and its partners

Page last updated: 2 October 2023

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