What is Public health?
Slough Public Health helps people in Slough live healthier, safer, and happier lives. Our focus is on keeping people healthy and preventing illness. We work with groups of people, rather than focusing on one person at a time.
Public health includes:
- preventing diseases before they spread
- preparing for health emergencies, such as pandemics
- encouraging healthy lifestyles by providing advice and support
- ensuring people from all backgrounds have an equal opportunity to be healthy
- using health data to target resources where they will make the biggest difference to improve health and wellbeing.
What does Slough Public Health do?
We provide strategic leadership to improve and protect the health of everyone in Slough, with a strong focus on reducing health inequalities.
We provide expert public health advice to:
- Slough Borough Council
- the NHS
- partner organisations
- the wider public.
Our work is based on, evidence and research, high-quality local health data and insights into local behaviours.
This helps decision-makers in the council and partner organisations make informed choices that improve health outcomes.
We also collaborate with partners to support research that benefits the local community.
Key areas of work
We lead and coordinate population health and wellbeing programmes, focusing on:
- children and young people
- prevention of long-term illnesses like diabetes and heart disease
- sexual and reproductive health
- drugs and alcohol
- general health improvement
- health protection
- emotional health and wellbeing.
Services we commission
In partnership with the Council, the NHS, and other organisations, we commission preventive and treatment services, including:
- 0–19 year-old services - The Healthy Child Programme
- sexual and reproductive health services
- Healthier Slough programmes: smoking cessation, weight management, falls prevention, and health checks
- specialist substance misuse and alcohol services
- immunisation and screening programmes
- NHS health checks.
Understanding local needs
Through the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA), we identify the current and future health and wellbeing needs of people in Slough.
This helps us plan services effectively, inform commissioning decisions in health, social care, public health, and children’s services and use data, service user experiences, and community feedback to improve health for everyone.