Agenda item

Considered a presentation by Louise Wallace, Director of Public Health and her colleagues Dr Gill Kelly, Consultant in Public Health, Dora Machaira, Public Health Manager, Scott Chapman, Service Manager Living Well Smokefree, and Andrew Stewart, Public Health Officer which provided an overview of health in North Yorkshire’s coastal communities together with initiatives in a variety of areas to tackle health challenges and inequalities and to secure improvements.

In the area of children and young people, intelligence from a strong Local Care Partnership with a Children and Young People’s subgroup was used to inform very innovative approaches to address the needs of local populations.  This included mental health support teams operating in schools, virtual reality talking therapies, specific work to enhance community support for young parents, a project to map mental health support and levels of absence in schools, early interventions with parents to provide support for children’s speech and language development, and work to address safety concerns of young women.  The Prevent, Access and Treatment initiative to promote oral health, the Babi Scarborough project bringing together multiple sources of routine data to answer health-based questions, and Asthma Friendly Schools were among the other initiatives mentioned.

In terms of protecting health, members were advised about the general autumn vaccination programme, the programme focused on frontline social care staff, and work specific to the Scarborough area to increase uptake of vaccinations, for example, in refugee, asylum seeker and migrant populations and uptake of cancer screening programmes.  Reference was also made to initiatives to improve sexual health awareness and work with young parents.

Lastly, members were advised about the local Know Your Numbers campaign to improve awareness of blood pressure and increase the number of people having their blood pressure checked, free heart health checks, and details of the proposed Tobacco Control Strategic Framework, the current Stop Smoking Service and the increased capacity within the service as a result of Government funding to realise the ambition of a smoke-free generation.  The new framework to deliver this objective was based on Public Health evidence of local stop smoking interventions and had a focus on strengthening resources, capacity and enhancing infrastructure.

Members then discussed the presentation.  In reply to questions, members were advised that:

·       there was a cross-directorate attendance alliance set up to improve school attendance figures in North Yorkshire, with added work in the Scarborough area to address mental and physical health and other factors which may affect the numbers

·       Smoking prevalence in Scarborough and Ryedale was 15.5% (higher than the North Yorkshire rate) but young people taking up smoking was under control and not driving this relatively high figure

·       Public Health supported the parliamentary bill to ban the sale of single-use vapes.  A task force had been set up to address the problem of children accessing vapes with the overarching ambition to make young people nicotine free.  The incidence of children accessing vapes was much higher than cigarettes.

·       The most recent Children and Young People’s Annual Report had highlighted the pressure children felt to use social media with its often harmful effect on their mental health.  The newly released results of the Growing Up in North Yorkshire survey would reveal more detail about this across different areas of the county.  The impact of the Australian ban on all children 16 or younger using social media would be followed with interest.

Resolved that:

        i.         the presentation be received; and

       ii.         the Director of Public Health be invited back to the meeting on 21 March 2025 to present her Annual Report on Healthy Ageing and its implications for the Scarborough and Whitby area.