We’re pleased to bring you our round-up highlighting some of PHE’s online activity from the past week. Here’s your chance to catch up on what you might have missed including:
Standardised packaging
This week MPs voted in favour of introducing standardised packaging of tobacco products:
Diabetes prevention
On Thursday we launched a new national Type 2 diabetes initiative, working alongside NHS England and Diabetes UK. The programme aims to significantly reduce the 4 million people in England otherwise expected to have Type 2 diabetes by 2025.
Healthy conversations report
This week the Royal Society for Public Health and PHE published the results of our survey into how allied health professionals participate in healthy conversations with their clients. PHE’s Linda Hindle (@HindleLinda) blogged about the encouraging level of engagement AHPs have with public health.
Preventing suicide in lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans young people
LGBT youth are at a higher risk of suicide due to the impact and fear of stigma or discrimination. We’ve worked with the Royal College of Nursing to develop toolkits to help nurses understand mental health issues in relation to LGBT sexual orientation and identity in young people, which were launched this week.
Mental health summit #PMH15
On Tuesday we hosted ‘Public Mental Health Summit: Collaborating in a Changing Landscape’ welcoming a range of delegates involved in planning, commissioning and providing public mental health programmes and services. At the conference we launched a new framework to build mental health skills in a wide range of professions. Guest speakers included Mark Brown (@MarkOneinFour) who talked about the ‘A Day in the Life’ project.
Scarlet fever
Our latest figures show a continued substantial increase in scarlet fever notifications across England (754 new cases last week) - this is the second year in a row of exceptional activity. More information about this bacterial illness is available from NHS Choices.
Immunisation
On Friday the JCVI advised that immunisation for meningococcal group W (MenW) disease be offered to 14 to 18 year-olds. PHE also published a review of the HPV immunisation programme for adolescent girls.
No Smoking Day
Congratulations to all those who made Wednesday’s No Smoking Day the day they started to stop.