7. What steps is the Minister taking to improve public health in South Wales West? OQ58698

Improving public health is identified as a priority within 'A Healthier Wales', our long-term strategy for health and social care. This is supported by plans such as our tobacco control and 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' strategies.

Minister, there are several communities within South Wales West where we see a poor level of public health impacting not just on those individuals and their life chances, but on the health services that are expected to treat them. Poor public health has a significant impact on the ability of our health and care services, with significant proportions of our health budget responding to people's lifestyle choices. Our rate of smoking, alcohol consumption, poor diet, and lack of exercise are putting people's lives at risk. Is it now time to review the public health interventions to find better ways to tackle the poor level of public health and to make this a priority for the NHS and for our nation? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Altaf, for that question. Tackling the public health challenges you've outlined is absolutely a priority for Welsh Government. As you've highlighted, obesity and smoking are drivers of inequalities, given their impact on people's life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, and people who are from the most deprived areas are more likely to be obese or to smoke than those in the least deprived. That's why tackling health inequalities is at the core of our proposals to tackle obesity and to support people to stop smoking. On obesity, we are committing over £13 million of funding to our 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' 2022-24 delivery plan to tackle obesity, with action to reduce diet and health inequalities across the population at its core.

On smoking, earlier this year we published our tobacco control strategy, and our first two-year delivery plan for 2022-24, and, in recognition of the health inequalities that arise as a result of smoking, tackling inequality is noted as one of the strategy's core themes. You mentioned physical activity. We're also placing an emphasis on supporting physical and mental well-being and actions such as our forthcoming social prescribing framework will aim to connect people with community support to better manage their health and well-being. Our consultation on that draft framework closed on 20 October, and we're currently analysing responses.