Climate change has been a controversial topic since Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, an Inconvenient Truth, with people passionately defending both sides of the debate – climate change deniers and climate change believers.  Over the past year climate change has become very topical due to the United States pulling out of the Paris Agreement. This is an agreement that aims to facilitate a global response to climate change by “keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.” Countries throughout the world have committed to working towards this aim and will report regularly on their emissions.

Why are we so concerned about climate change? Researchers have been able to demonstrate that climate change will have a significant impact on the weather, agriculture and a range of other areas. This week, The Lancet Countdown report has demonstrated the impact of climate change on our health.

What is the Lancet Countdown?

The Lancet Countdown is an international research collaboration consisting of 26 institutions tracking the world’s response to climate change and in so doing have been able to reveal the impact that climate change has on the public’s health.

Some of the research findings

In this week’s report, researchers stated that climate change is “already a significant public health issue and a looming global health emergency.”

Some of their key findings were:

• Between 2000 and 2016, the number of vulnerable people exposed to heatwave events had increased by around 125 million.
• Annual weather-related disasters increased by 46% from 2000 to 2013.
• Vectorial capacity for the transmission of dengue increased by 9.4% (Aedes aegypti) and 11.1% (Aedes albopictus) due to climate trends since the 1950s.
• The number of undernourished people in 30 countries vulnerable to climate change and highly dependent on regional food production has increased from 398 million in 1990 to 422 million in 2016.
• Over 803,000 premature and avoidable deaths in 2015 as a result of air pollution across 21 Asian countries, attributable to just one type of air pollution from coal power, transport and use of fossil fuels in the home.

The report highlights the progress that has been made to tackle climate change and this includes:

• Many countries now have a climate change risk assessment in place
• Over a third of countries in the study have developed plans to increase the climate resilience of their health infrastructure
• The total primary energy supply of coal peaked in 2013 and has been rapidly declining, showing a movement towards cleaner energy supplies

Prof. Anthony Costello, Co-Chair of the Lancet Countdown and a Director at the World Health Organization concluded that:

 “Climate change is happening and it’s a health issue today for millions worldwide. The outlook is challenging, but we still have an opportunity to turn a looming medical emergency into the most significant advance for public health this century.”

The Lancet Countdown will continue to report on climate change annually with the aim of ensuring that governments continue to pursue efforts to prevent climate change.

 

Our Thoughts

The Lake Foundation was happy to see this report published which provided an update on the progress being made to tackle climate change and clearly explained the impact on our health. It was sad to read that climate change is disproportionately affecting communities least responsible for climate change and those most vulnerable in society. We need to understand how we can encourage those that are most responsible for climate change to take responsibility and act now.  There is work to be done to discuss climate change with those who believe it doesn’t exist, many people with this view are very influential and there needs to be some form of compromise so that progress can be made.  The take home message should be that regardless of your view, we need to respect and take care of the planet.  Reducing pollution and preserving our wildlife is the right thing to do, you can’t really argue with that.

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For more information on the Lancet Countdown report please visit their website here

Last week, the UK’s Chancellor, Philip Hammond, published the UK’s 2017 Spring Budget and there were a few decisions made that will affect the public’s health and wellbeing.  These decisions focus on the following areas:

• Alcohol
• Tobacco
• Soft drinks
• Access to new drugs and treatments
• Health and social care services
• Women’s Health (through the tampon tax fund)

Alcohol

From 13 March 2017, the duty rates on beer, cider, wine and spirits were increased in line with RPI inflation. This was not well-received by the hospitality industry who were hoping for a freeze or cut of the previously announced increases. But the government’s health impact assessment suggests that the increases are likely to lead to a minor decrease in  overall alcohol consumption in the UK. From a public health point of view, this is promising news as excessive alcohol consumption is linked to an increased risk of developing a number of diseases including mouth, throat, breast and live cancers, heart disease, stroke and liver disease so any decrease in alcohol consumption is of benefit to the health of the nation.

Tobacco

From 8^th March 2017, duty rates on all tobacco products increased by 2% above RPI inflation and the government will introduce a Minimum Excise Tax for cigarettes. This will target the cheapest tobacco and raise funds for the government. This policy aims to stop the public, particularly young people, from purchasing cheap cigarettes with data showing that 71% of 16-24 year olds who smoke buy the cheaper brands. By making these products unaffordable it is hoped that it will prevent young people from taking up the habit of smoking or stop those who already smoke. With smoking being strongly linked to lung cancer any strategy that reduces the amount of people who smoke will go some way to reducing lung cancer rates as well as the other diseases linked to smoking such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, stroke and more.

Soft Drinks Levy

The soft drinks levy was announced in previous budgets and in this budget the Chancellor confirmed the detail of what the levies would be. The rate for  drinks with a total sugar content of 5 grams or more per 100 millilitres will be set at 18 pence per litre and those with 8 grams or more per 100 millilitres will be set at 24 pence per litre. It is expected that this will raise an extra £1Bn and will come into effect from April 2018.

The money raised from the sugar levy will be used to double the funding available to primary schools for PE and sports programmes. The government has estimated the sugar levy will raise £320 million a year for primary schools to support healthier more active lifestyles in children. The funding will not only go towards expanding PE and sports programmes but to also expand breakfast clubs in primary schools ensuring that children have access to a healthy breakfast every week day.

The idea behind the sugar levy is a good one. It’s hoped that the levy will incentivise the soft drinks industry to reduce the amount of sugar in their products, helping the public consume less sugar. The money raised will go towards helping children get more active and healthy and thus tackle our high rates of childhood obesity.  So, from a public health point of view the sugar levy is a win-win.

Access to new drugs and treatments

The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) will  support collaboration between business and the science community. There will be an initial investment of £270 million in 2017-18 to kick-start the development technologies that have the potential to transform the UK economy.  The first wave of funding will focus on a number of areas, one of which will be improving and accelerating patient access to new drugs and treatments by exploring ways of improving manufacturing technologies.  This is a much-needed area of focus for patients ensuring that they have access to the best treatments, but it is important to ensure that these drugs and treatments are affordable to ensure that all patients benefit.

Health and Social Care Services

An additional £2 billion will be provided to local government over the next three years to support adult social care services. Half of this funding will be made available in the 2017/2018 financial year so that councils across the UK can take immediate action to support local social care providers and relieve the pressure on the NHS locally. This a significant amount of funding and we hope that a clear strategy for social care is developed and implemented so that a real difference is made.

The government will also provide an additional £100 million to the NHS in England in 2017-18  to improve waiting times and manage the increasing demands on A&E departments. There was mention in the budget of “increase the provision of on-site GP facilities” in A&E and we feel with the increasing pressures that GPs are under coupled with the shortage of GPs, moving them into an A&E setting may not be the best approach to tackling the challenges in A&E.

The government will continue its work supporting Sustainability and Transformational Plans in the NHS and will invest £325 million over the next three years to support local proposals that aim to improve patient care in a sustainable way.

Support Women’s Health and Wellbeing Through the Tampon Tax

Tampons are considered a luxury item and therefore have to be taxed, but following a campaign to cut the tampon tax the government decided, in a previous budget, that every year £15M raised from the tampon tax will be given to women’s charities. In this current budget the Chancellor has agreed to continue this.

The tampon tax has made a significant difference to women’s health with charities like Ovarian Cancer Action,  Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust,  The Eve Appeal and Breast Cancer Care benefiting from the funding. We hope that this funding will continue and that charities focusing on health issues that are of particular concern to black women will apply.

Our Conclusion

The government has introduced some policies and allocated funding to  areas that will make a difference to the health of UK’s public. We do believe that opportunities were missed to really support disease prevention by going further with measures to reduce obesity and there was only an indirect focus on physical activity through the use of the funding for the sugar tax.

For the black community to benefit from this budget we encourage black charities working on women’s issues to explore the tampon tax funding and put in an application when the next funding round opens. We also encourage the black community to engage with their local councils and get involved in any consultations regarding the use of the money allocated to them for social care services.

 

On Tuesday, we attended an event hosted by King’s College London and Ipsos MORI entitled “Public health: an individual’s or the government’s responsibility?”. This was a really interesting event that featured:

• Duncan Selbie, Chief Executive of Public Health England
• Ben Page, Chief Executive of Ipsos MORI
• Janet Atherton, President of the Association of Directors for Public Health
• Louise Park, Head of Public Health Research at Ipsos MORI
• Dr James Rubin, Senior Lecturer at King’s College London

The speakers explored the range of approaches that the government use to encourage the public to adopt a healthy lifestyle (education, incentives, taxation, bans and innovative behavioural science techniques) and the public’s reaction to these. The key questions this event aimed to answer were: Does the public welcome such approaches and where do they draw the line between individual and state responsibility?

These questions were answered by Louise Park, Head of Public Health Research at Ipsos MORI, who presented data from a recent study. This study showed that the public were evenly split about their feelings about government involvement in influencing an individual’s behaviour to encourage a healthy lifestyle with 39% saying the government should intervene and 32% saying the government should not intervene.

In terms of where the public begins to draw the line between individual and state responsibility for health, predictably the public starts to draw the line as they begin to feel their freedom of choice is being compromised.

The findings from the Ipsos MORI study opened up a discussion on the role the government should play. Generally it was felt that the government should be an information provider who gently nudges the public into rethinking their behaviour but there was concern from attendees that the government does give mixed messages which can be confusing and this is further compounded by media misrepresentation of the facts. In response to this Public Health England stressed that the government follows the most reliable evidence when providing information and will continue to stand by that approach.

The event ended with agreement that improving the public’s health requires everyone to take some responsibility, this includes members of the public, the government, food manufacturers, restaurants, schools and many more.

This was a good debate to have and we recognise the role that charities like ourselves can play in developing healthy lifestyle programmes for communities that the government does not reach.