Meeting of the Parliament 25 September 2018
It is interesting that Mr Whittle left poverty off that list, considering what the United Kingdom Tory Government is doing in rolling out universal credit and putting a lot of people into debt and poverty. People are having to access food via food banks. He chose not to mention poverty.
The mental health strategy looks at physical health—at smoking cessation, screening and physical activity levels. Programmes have been set up under the mental health strategy that are committed to improving physical health inequalities among people with mental health problems. On smoking cessation, for example, NHS Lothian has a tobacco control action plan that it launched on 20 June. The plan contains commitments to raise awareness among medical professionals and healthcare staff of the significant impact that smoking can have on mental health medications.
Two projects are running on screening. The first is run by NHS Dumfries and Galloway and is to improve, through gaining an understanding of the barriers to uptake, the uptake of breast, cervical and bowel screening among people who are experiencing homelessness or who have mental health problems. NHS Lanarkshire is reviewing options to increase uptake of cervical, bowel, and breast screening services for the homeless population in Lanarkshire.
The active living becomes achievable—ALBA—project is a new and unique behaviour-change project that links in with existing physical activity provisions to enhance sustainable individual physical activity engagement through behaviour change. The aim is to increase physical activity levels for people living with mental and/or physical health conditions in order to improve their mental and physical health and wellbeing. The results of the ALBA intervention will be available in September 2019.