Public Health Review: Analysis of responses to the engagement paper

2 The respondents and the analysis

The respondents

2.1 The engagement paper received 117 responses in total – 6 from individuals and 111 from organisations. Ten of the respondents (mostly professional associations or third sector agencies) had a UK-wide remit. The rest were based in Scotland. A breakdown of the number of respondents, by respondent type is shown in Table 2.1 below. These respondent type categories will be used throughout this report in quotations, and when making comparisons between different groups.

2.2 Annex 1 contains a complete list of the respondents.

Table 2.1: Number of respondents, by respondent type

2.3 In some cases, different departments or sections within a single NHS Board or local authority submitted separate responses.

Analysis of the responses

2.4 The responses received in this consultation were very diverse, and some were lengthy and detailed. Most, but by no means all, respondents addressed the engagement questions; however, they also often had other points they wanted to make.

2.5 Some respondents, reflecting the perspective of their organisation, focused their response on a particular topic (e.g. substance misuse, child health, asthma, cancer, sustainable food production, optometry, dentistry, pharmacy, etc.). These responses generally highlighted the contribution made to the health of the population by work in this area and / or they identified priority needs in relation to the topic. Chapter 9 provides further information about the topic-focused responses.

2.6 The reporting of the analysis cannot fully reflect the level of detail in the wide range of comments received. Rather, this report presents the main themes identified in the analysis, and its focus is primarily on the points made in relation to each of the engagement questions. A separate comparative analysis was also undertaken in relation to the comments from health, local government, partnership and third sector respondents, and the results of this comparison are presented in Chapter 10.

2.7 Note that the engagement paper referred to the three domains of public health as: (i) health improvement, (ii) improving health services and (iii) health protection (with a fourth area comprising public health intelligence and evidence). However, it was clear that, in many of the responses, ‘public health’ and the task of reducing health inequalities was largely equated with the ‘health improvement’ domain. Thus, an attempt has been made in this report to draw out where respondents made specific comments about the other domains of public health – namely, improving health services and health protection.