Public health is the process that gathers, interprets, and translates knowledge of health factors amongst the population into effective action.

Click here to read the 109th Annual Medical Officer of Health and 14th Director of Public Health Report for 2007/08, with the Special theme of 'Learning from others'.

This report is likely to be the last one produced by Guernsey's first Director of Public Health, Dr David Jeffs. Read this media release for more information.

When reviewing public health services in Britain earlier in 2004, special advisor to the Chancellor, Mr Derek Wanless, defined three separate (though overlapping) core domains for public health, i.e. areas where public health skills such as epidemiology, biostatistics, and the evaluation of ‘healthcare evidence’ had a special contribution to make.  In Guernsey, these three domains encompass:

Health protection to include:

• Environmental Health;
• Food safety;
• Infectious disease control;
• States Analyst’s Laboratory;
• Emergency planning and major incident response.

Health promotion to include:

• Activities of the Health Promotion Unit;
• Health education more widely;
• Managed services such as the Guernsey Adolescent Smoke-free Project (GASP), Guernsey Quitline, the Cardiac Action Group, etc.

The scope and quality of healthcare services to include:

• Health records;
• Clinical coding;
• Healthcare information;
• Clinical audit;
• Clinical risk management;
• Clinical governance more generally;
• Health strategy;
• Reviews of specific service development.