Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Editorials Election 2017

Time to put health at the heart of all policy making

BMJ 2017; 357 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j2676 (Published 02 June 2017) Cite this as: BMJ 2017;357:j2676

Rapid Response:

Re: Time to put health at the heart of all policy making. Time to walk the talk

Accordng to a BBC report today, Public Health England is patting England on the back for world leading efforts in reducing sugar intake.

Putting public health at the heart of policy making will be a good idea. To implement it we need, POSSIBLY, a couple of people who can be the Good Guys who can toss down a glass of the best Scotch and a few pints of your best bitter, mine host. And they can write a report thanking the industry (fattening industry) for understanding the need of public health philosophy.

But more than anything else we need the public health experts, the local authority directors of public health to get out of the closets and as the BAD BOYS, tell their planning colleagues and the chief executives well as the leaders of their councils that the proliferation of fast food outlets, take aways, tobacconists, off-licences, is in effect, murdering the good folk who pay their salaries, etc. Yes. Until they cut down these businesses, they are promoting fat Britons, with bad livers, bad lungs.

If you, the public health advisors of the local authorities do not make yourselves heard, you are not makng yourselves unpopular. And you remain useless to the public.

Competing interests: No competing interests

11 October 2017
JK Anand
Retired doctor
Free spirit
Peterborough