Monday 16 April 2012

NHS to launch three new breast-feeding programmes across Northamptonshire - Northampton Chronicle & Echo


Northampton Chronicle & Echo

NHS to launch three new breast-feeding programmes across Northamptonshire
Northampton Chronicle & Echo
But a raft of other services will be paid for by NHS Northamptonshire over the next 12 months with £60000 of funds. They include project work in an area of low breast feeding or high drop-off rates, where mums begin breast feeding and for some reason ...
Northampton Chronicle & Echo

Health and wellbeing boards – System leaders or talking shops?

Health and wellbeing boards – System leaders or talking shops?:
Health and wellbeing boards: System leaders or talking shops?  presents the findings from that survey and includes case studies based on the experience of two early implementers.
The paper assesses the ways in which local authorities have begun to develop new arrangements with their partners – the size, composition and ways of working emerging from the shadow boards. NHS Networks

Consultation launched on standardised tobacco packaging

Consultation launched on standardised tobacco packaging:
A UK-wide consultation seeking views on whether tobacco products should be sold in standardised packaging has been launched.
The government is exploring whether action on tobacco packaging has the potential to bring public health benefits over and above those from our current initiatives.
Standardised packaging could consist of, for example:
  • no branding
  • a uniform colour
  • standard font and text for any writing on the pack
Views are also sought on whether there might be other implications if standardised packaging requirements were introduced, including any potential effect on the illicit tobacco market.
The consultation asks for views on whether:
  • tobacco packaging should remain unchanged
  • plain packaging should be adopted
  • a different option should be considered
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said:
“Smoking remains one of the most significant challenges to public health. Each year it accounts for over 100,000 deaths in the UK and one in two long-term smokers will die prematurely from a smoking disease. 
“That is why the health ministers across the UK have a responsibility to look closely at initiatives that might encourage smokers to quit and stop young people taking up smoking in the first place.”
You have until 10 July to have your say on the tobacco packaging consultation.
Any decisions to take further policy action on tobacco packaging will be taken only after full consideration is given to consultation responses, evidence and other relevant information.

Systematic review of evidence

The Public Health Research Consortium, a network of researchers funded by the Department of Health’s Policy Research Programme, has published a systematic review of the evidence on plain tobacco packaging.
The review was commissioned by the Department of Health and supported through the Public Health Research Consortium.
The report represents the work and views of the authors, and not necessarily those of the Department of Health.
Department of Health

VIDEO: 'Parkinson's is with you for life'

VIDEO: 'Parkinson's is with you for life': Researchers are to conduct the world's biggest study into the causes of Parkinson's disease, a brain condition that affects almost 130,000 people in the UK. BBC News

Coalition to cut NHS redundancy costs

Coalition to cut NHS redundancy costs: Redundancy payments could add many millions of pounds to the overall costs of the reforms. Health & Social Care News

Elsevier launches Clinical Key

Elsevier launches Clinical Key: Scientific content publishers, Elsevier, this week launched Clinical Key, a "clinical insight engine" that aggregates information from textbooks and journals. EHI News

Doctors turn on No 10 over failure to curb obesity surge

Doctors turn on No 10 over failure to curb obesity surge: Major food and drinks firms fuel crisis with irresponsible marketing, claim doctors, who call for ban on fast-food sponsorship deals. The body that represents every doctor in the country has launched an unprecedented attack on the coalition government's failed strategy to tackle an obesity epidemic in the UK.The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges demands "bold and tough" measures to put an end to the role of "irresponsible marketing" by major food and drinks firms in fuelling the crisis. It calls on ...
Guardian

NHS Bill for England: What changes will the public see?

NHS Bill for England: What changes will the public see?: about the changes patients will see and when they would start to take place. Kings Fund health News

Who will take responsibility for rolling out 'telecare'?

Who will take responsibility for rolling out 'telecare'?:
Despite the government's enthusiasm for telecare, many GPs will be too busy trying to commission to learn how to do it
Last week, I expressed my disappointment with the King's Fund's International Telehealth and Telecare Conference. I am so upset that I am returning to the subject again.
For starters, I was amazed that there were only three GPs present. I found this strange, as telecare is likely to change the way GPs treat patients for ever. Or do GPs consider telehealth as just another irritating technology, like electronic patient records and email, which will go away if you ignore them long enough?
One speaker involved in the project said that GPs were divided between those who were interested, those who were not sure and those who didn't want to know. One GP claimed that telecare increased patient anxiety and workload for GPs.
On the other hand, community matrons and nurses already involved in telecare monitoring were generally very positive. They found that telecare made it easier to manage their own time. They even claimed that telecare would reduce the GPs' workload! This figures in my experience; nurses tend to welcome new ways of treating patients, but doctors hang back, particularly if what is proposed will radically change their way of life.
One of the GPs who did turn up asked the minister, Paul Burstow, a very intelligent question: "We GPs are up to our eyes in learning how to commission. How are going to find time to get our heads round telehealth?"
The minister had been emphasizing that 3millionlives was not a top-down initiative, like Tony Blair's nasty centralised National Programme for IT. It is going to be rolled out by lovely localised commissioning consortia. Paul Burstow had no answer for that GP, who was going to be too busy for telecare.
All he had to offer were "how to do it" guides and awareness campaigns. The trouble is that too many clinicians do not seem to want to know. It will take more than awareness campaigns to persuade them, and then educate them, which could be a long and arduous process, with all the other demands on their time.
Burstow's sidekick in the Department of Health called for the NHS, social services and industry to work together. He asked for leaders to come forward, including financial leaders, to share the vision and drive 3millionlives forward. He is right. But I have heard these calls before, and they haven't been answered.
I can't see where the charismatic champions will come from. Instead, I have a nasty feeling that 3millionlives will come to be regarded by clinicians as just another part of the hated Lansley reforms, and will be rejected by the profession.
There was, however, one bit of good news to come out of the conference. Apparently, Cornwall was not waiting for the peer-reviewed report. It had decided to start extending telecare to 30,000 patients. They had seen the evidence with their own eyes, and have people fired up to give more patients the benefits of telecare. So, why hang about?
Guardian Healthcare Network