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Early intervention “key” to narrowing health gap |
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Tuesday, 20 November 2007 |
Early interventions are “key” to narrowing the gap in adult health, Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer said today.
Presenting his second annual report Dr Harry Burns said progress has been made in recent years to shake off Scotland’s “Sick Man of Europe” label, but added: “…we can not disguise the fact that it is not improving fast enough for the poorest sections of our society.”
His report highlights a number of initiatives that he says shows that investment and support of expectant mothers, their infants and young children can make a “real difference” to their future health and life prospects.
The report also draws attention to early findings on the impact of the smoke-free legislation in Scotland, which shows that there were 46,466 recorded quit attempts made in 2006 with an estimated 4.3 per cent of smokers in Scotland made a quit attempt with NHS smoking cessation service.
Burns says: "The advent of the smoking legislation has sent a powerful message that health is important and more and more Scots are realising that they can improve their health and the quality of their life by taking exercise and eating healthy.
The Chief Medical Officer's Annual Report for 2006 can be found at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/11/15135302/0
One person has commented on this article. 1. Early intervention “key” to narrowing health gap
Anonymous, Unregistered I note the 2nd annual Report from Scotlands Chief Med Officer-Dr Harry Burns and see that in Scotland we still have alot of work to do to reduce the health gap of Adults in Scotland.I work in Health and have the confidence knowing we have specialists who are in key positions to make a difference with early interventions particularly for expectant mothers,their infants and young children.An example is a Health visitor,district nurse or a community midwife as well as the GP and the wider team.We parhaps need some help with strengthening our ability to collect data and analyse the data/feedback but we are in a prime position in community.If we know what works better then we should adopt those strategies.I am at the same time concerned because there is a drive to integrate services with Social work and this might detract from the Health focus and strategy.I am not adverse about working together for all sort of reasons which include better communication but it does worry me that Health could lose their ability to engage with families and mothers due to this integration and we are not so health focussed as we need to be to reduce the gaps in health at a faster rate than we currently do
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