The public health function has a wide-ranging overview of health, well-being and social care, although for almost 40 years until recently it was seen as a ‘health’, that is an NHS, function. Older people may remember the Medical Officer of Health (MoH), a local government post that provided a model which will be more or less recreated in a new form as a result of the government’s changes. Public health has been given relatively little credit over the years, certainly not by the general population who have little understanding of its role, for the important part it plays in society, alongside environmental health services provided by local authorities. Now that the public health function is to move to local government there is scope for a greater visibility in demonstrating its value to the community, although conversely less visibility as an NHS function.

For many years, public health has undertaken broadly four separate tasks for health authorities, latterly, PCTs, and now local authorities. It has tackled prevention and health promotion, often in conjunction with health-promotion teams; it has dealt with communicable disease control, notably keeping an eye on epidemics and outbreaks of cryptosporidium and other micro-organisms, and in organising or promoting vaccination programmes; it has tackled health inequalities and equity gaps in health and social care, not least in working with local government in the Spearhead group and similar initiatives; and it has undertaken a large number of reviews of strategic needs as part of support to health authority and PCT boards on priority setting and resource allocation.