Agenda item

The Council received the 2021 Annual Report of the Director of Public Health for County Durham (for copy see file of Minutes).

Under the National Health Service Act 2006, one of the statutory requirements of the Director of Public Health was to produce an annual report about the health of the local population.  The local authority had a duty to publish the report.  The government had not specified what the annual report might contain and had made it clear that this was a decision for individual Directors of Public Health to determine.

The Director of Public Health annual report for 2021 focused on the following:

·        Health and wellbeing across County Durham

·        Approach to wellbeing

·        County Durham – our health roadmap

·        COVID-19 – response and recovery

·        Update on strategic priorities

·        Specific focus on 3 remaining strategic priorities:

·        Promoting positive behaviours

·        High quality drug and alcohol services

·        Better quality of life through integrated health and care services

·        Revisiting the Taylors with a focus on real life case studies

·        Update on recommendations from 2020

·        A set of recommendations for 2021 based on the three priority areas of focus.

Councillor P Sexton, Cabinet Portfolio Holder for Adult and Health Services thanked the Director of Public Health for the presentation of the Annual Report and placed on record his thanks to the Director and her team for their work over the last 20 months which had been a very challenging time.