The UK government’s current plans for public health in England give it the prominence it deserves but leave far too many key questions unanswered, say experts, amid fears that national inequalities in health could worsen as a result.

Speaking at a conference in London on 24 March on the future of public health, Yvonne Doyle, regional director of public health for NHS South East Coast and an adviser to the Department of Health, said that localism was at the heart of the government’s plans.

But this represented a very different way of doing things from what had gone before. “We will have to work quite hard to ensure that localism gets its place in the sun,” she said.

And as has happened …