RSPH calls for massive expansion to workforce supporting the public’s health

Building on the report Understanding the Wider Public Health Workforce published jointly by the Centre for Workforce Intelligence (CfWI) and the Royal Society of Public Health (RSPH), RSPH have produced a report to call for anyone who has “the opportunity or ability to positively impact health and wellbeing through their work” to join the wider public health workforce. Click here to read Rethinking the Public Health Workforce.

Through Rethinking the Public Health Workforce, RSPH have suggested certain areas that alongside appropriate training of the wider workforce could support public health activities. They include the following:

• Point of care testing including body fat measurements, finder prick testing, blood pressure, BMI
• Behaviour change programmes, healthy conversations, and signposting the public on to more specialist services
• Social prescribing including screening the public for lifestyle health conditions such as inactivity, low level anxiety or social isolation
• Assisting the public to overcome physical and emotional barriers to health advice including access to GPs and initiating conversations about health