Patients flow across administrative boundaries every day in Wales and England. Local health boards in Wales work with clinical commissioning groups in England to ensure the provision of high-quality healthcare for their local populations.

'A Healthier Wales’ is the Welsh Government’s first joint health and social care plan and sets out a long-term future vision of a whole-system approach focused on providing joined-up services in community settings, including more emphasis on preventative services and on maintaining health and well-being.  

Welsh Government recognises the health benefits of breastfeeding for mothers and babies and is committed to promoting its uptake and providing support to mothers who choose to breastfeed. A national programme is implementing the recommended actions from the review published in May 2018, focused on improving breastfeeding rates in maternity and early years settings.

We continue to work with health boards and Health Education and Improvement Wales on recruitment and retention challenges, with short, medium and long-term action. This includes our successful Train Work Live campaign, increasing medical school places and working to ensure more Welsh students study to become healthcare professionals. 

Since the publication of the chief medical officer’s report last year, we have been working across Government to identify the actions that we can take to reduce gambling-related harm and the impact it has on health and wider society. Further details are given in my written statement of 21 December.

I use a range of measures to continually assess the performance, successes and challenges of delivering health services across Wales. In north Wales, I have also set out clear milestones for the health board in the special measures improvement framework, published in May.