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Healthwatch Enfield Chair, Deborah Fowler, has written to Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Public Health, Jane Ellison MP, to convey Healthwatch Enfield’s concern over the potential impact on people in Enfield of both the overall planned cuts in funding for public health and also the intended distribution of those cuts.

The letter reads as follows:

concern over cuts to public health

Dear Ms Ellison MP,

Concern Over Cuts to Public Health

I am writing to express Healthwatch Enfield’s concern over the potential impact on people in Enfield of both the overall planned cuts in funding for public health and also the intended distribution of those cuts.

Public health has an important role to play in improving the health and wellbeing of the whole community through a range of activities. These activities include raising people’s awareness of factors affecting their physical and mental health, creating and maintaining ‘herd immunity’, planning for emergencies, etc.

We are very concerned at the possible risks to the local population of the scale of the proposed cuts, and also the proposed distribution of these cuts, as Enfield already has a very low per capita funding rate. This is for historic reasons and does not reflect the DH’s current assessment of need in Enfield, which includes considerable deprivation, presenting considerable challenges to getting public health messages across to the local population.

Healthwatch Enfield asks that decisions on funding reflect the genuine need in the local area and that you therefore do not impose the planned severe cuts on public health in Enfield.

Yours sincerely

Deborah Fowler
Chair, Healthwatch Enfield

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Karl Brown posted a reply
27 Sep 2015 21:15
Compare the last two posts: Healthwatch Enfield appealing for funds to protect the Borough’s citizens; whereas the Mayor issues a report highlighting £2bn of health savings if we all switched the equivalent of one car journey every second day to walking or cycling. The latter report also having positive health benefits highlighted – call it roughly 2500 extra years of healthy life every year in Enfield on a basic pro rata basis – or conversely, based on the pre VW HMG figures - some 200-400 Enfield residents who die each year due to air pollution, the majority of which is caused by transport journeys.
Curious world we seek so hard to preserve in some quarters when such a small change could be so significant to so many others.
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