Director of Public Health annual report 2011 and core tables 2010

Too many children and young people are living in circumstances that make it difficult for them to thrive. That is the key message from the third Annual Report of the Director of Public Health (DPH) for Northern Ireland, which was published on 14th June 2012. This significant report highlights the many public health challenges that affect people in Northern Ireland.As Director of Public Health, Dr Carolyn Harper's report describes the main public health challenges across Northern Ireland, and details work being undertaken by the Public Health Agency (PHA) and its partners over the past year to improve the health and wellbeing of people here.A Core Tables report for 2010, available below, produced by the PHA in support of the Director of Public Health's Annual Report for 2011-2012, including information such as estimated home population figures and projections, births information, fertility rates, death rates, information on mortality, life expectancy, immunisation rates and screening uptake rates.

Public Health Agency Business plan 2013-2014

This Business Plan sets out the key priorities and actions that will be progressed by the Public Health Agency (PHA) in 2013/14. The PHA believes that these actions will have the biggest impact on improving levels of health and social wellbeing, protecting the health of the community, and ensuring patients continue to receive high quality and safe treatment and care services.The business plan is available to download below.

Public Health Agency Business plan 2014-2015

This Business Plan sets out the key priorities and actions that will be progressed by the Public Health Agency (PHA) in 2014/15. The PHA believes that these actions will have the biggest impact on improving levels of health and social wellbeing, protecting the health of the community, and ensuring patients continue to receive high quality and safe treatment and care services.The business plan is available to download below.

Director of Public Health annual report 2013 and additional core tables Recognising diversity in Public Health

The fifth Director of Public Health Annual Report for Northern Ireland, launched on 16 June 2014, celebrates diversity in our population.Diversity is about people and how we value and appreciate those who are not like us. People differ in all sorts of ways which may not always be obvious or visible. These differences might include race and ethnicity, culture and belief, gender and sexuality, age and social status, ability, and use of health and social care services

Public Health Agency Annual Business Plan 2015-2016

This Business Plan sets out the key priorities and actions that will be progressed by the Public Health Agency (PHA) in 2015/16. The PHA believes that these actions will have the biggest impact on improving levels of health and social wellbeing, protecting the health of the community, and ensuring patients continue to receive high quality and safe treatment and care services.The business plan is available to download below.

II Comprehensive Mental Health Plan For Andalusia 2008-2012 : Andalusian Public Health System

A Comprehensive Plan is a medium-term planning instrument. Its development alone does not guarantee the achievement of the goals laid out in it, but by defining the goals, establishing priorities and setting out courses of action and concrete activities it will allow for an overall vision of the objectives being aimed towards and the tasks that will need to be carried out. The first Comprehensive Mental Health Plan for Andalusia 2003-2007 (I PISMA, Plan Integral de Salud Mental de Andalucía) was developed using this approach. Nine courses of action were covered in this Plan, which over its duration lead to noticeable progress in various fields.The assessment of the I PISMA and the experience gained from its development have channelled into this second Comprehensive Mental Health Plan for Andalusia 2008-2012 (II PISMA). The main principles for this second Plan are quality improvements, equality and efficiency of health services, aimed at public awareness of mental health in the Andalusian population, prevention of the illnesses and improvements to the care of patients and their families.

Childbirth and labour plan Andalusian public health System

En la cub.: Plan de parto y nacimiento. Publicado en la página web de la Consejería de Salud y Bienestar Social: www.juntadeandalucia.es/salud (Consejería de Salud y Bienestar Social / Ciudadanía / Inicio / Nuestra salud / Vida sana / Embarazo y salud)

The andalusian comprehensive cancer plan 2002-2006 : Andalusian Public Health System

Cancer is a major health problem in our Autonomous Community and is the second cause of death in both males and females. The incidence, mortality, potential years of life lost and resource consumption alongside the suffering endured by patients and families call for a commitment to be made by the Health Administration, healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers. This Plan is based on updated analyses of the mortality, incidence and survival of Cancer in Andalusia, of the situation of Cancer care and the resources available and of the expectations of patients and main caregivers, and on the conclusions of different Work Groups on the Management of Processes related to Cancer. The Andalusian Comprehensive Cancer Plan establishes an action programme that involves organisational and functional changes, new proposals for the training of professionals and a specific funding base.

Comprehensive heart disease action plan for Andalusia 2005-2009 : Andalusian Public Health System

The Comprehensive Heart Disease Action Plan for Andalusia 2005-2009 has been prepared within the framework of the presentations made both in the 3rd Andalusian Health Action Plan and in the Quality Plan of the Public Health System. Consequently, as with these two referral instruments, the improvement in the health results for the citizens of Andalusia continues to be sought without wavering, specifically with regard to meeting the needs and expectations of the population affected by health problems in this area.

La sostenibilidad del sistema sanitario desde una perspectiva de redes sociales: una propuesta para la promoción de hábitos saludables y apoyo social

The search of new health management formulas focused to give wide services is one of the priorities of our present health policies. Those formulas examine the optimization of the links between the main actors involved in public health, ie, users, professionals, local socio-political and corporate agents. This paper is aimed to introduce the Social Network Analysis as a method for analyzing, measuring and interpreting those connections. The knowledge of people's relationships (what is called social networks) in the field of public health is becoming increasingly important at an international level. In fact, countries such as UK, Netherlands, Italy, Australia and U.S. are looking formulas to apply this knowledge to their health departments. With this work we show the utility of the ARS on topics related to sustainability of the health system, particularly those related with health habits and social support, topics included in the 2020 health strategies that underline the importance of the collaborative aspects in networks.

Work and health conditions of sugar cane workers in Brazil

This is an exploratory research, with a quantitative approach, developed with the objective of analyzing the work and of life situations that can offer risks to the workers' health involved in the manual and automated cut of the sugar cane. The sample was composed by 39 sugar cane cutters and 16 operators of harvesters. The data collection occurred during the months of July and August of 2006, by the technique of direct observation of work situations and workers' homes and through interviews semi-structured. The interviews were recorded and later transcribed. Data were analyzed according to Social Ecological Theory. It was observed that the workers deal with multiple health risk situations, predominantly to the risks of occurrence of respiratory, musculoskeletal and psychological problems and work-related accidents due to the work activities. The interaction of individual, social and environmental factors can determine the workers' tendency to falling ill.

The significance of distributive effects in social assessment of health care

In this paper we address the importance of distributive effects in the social valuation of QALY's. We propose a social welfarefunction that generalises the functions traditionally used in the health economic literature. The novelty is that, depending on the individual health gains, our function can representeither preferences for concentrating or preferences for spreading total gain or both together, an issue which has notbeen addressed until now. Based on an experiment, we observe that this generalisation provides a suitable approximation tothe sampled social preferences.

The social value of health programs: Is age a relevant factor?

In cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) it is usually assumed that a QALY is of equal value to everybody, irrespective of the patient's age. However, it is possible that society assigns different social values to a QALY according to who gets it. In this paper we discuss the possibility of weighting health benefits for age in CEA. We also examinethe possibility that age-related preferences depend on the size of the health gain. An experiment was performedto test these hypotheses. The results assessing suggest that the patient's age is a relevant factor when assessing health gains.

Disability in Iowa: Public Health Needs Assessment

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of adults reporting a disability is expected to increase, along with the need for appropriate medical and public health services. People with disabilities (PWD) face many barriers to good heath, including having overall poorer health, less access toadequate health care, limited access to health insurance, skipping mediacl care because of cost, and engaging in risky health behaviors including smoking and physical inactivity. The goals of the Iowa public health needs assessment were to assess the burden of disability in Iowa counties including health risk factors such as chronic conditions, determine access to preventive health care, and determine the effect of socioeconomic conditions. The state level assessment was based on th 2009-2012 American Community Survey (ACS) and publiccally available Behavioral Risk FactorSurveillance System (BRFSS) 2011 survey. The 2001-2010 combined BRFSS data was used for county level assessment. The needs assessment led us to conclude that adult Iowans with idsabilities face several challenges compared to non-disabled adults. They are more likely to suffer from debilitating chronic conditions and social disparities. Counties with the higher levels of poverty were more likely to have PWD with higher levels of disability related disparities.