Plymouth City Council
Public Health in Plymouth
Plymouth is a city of approximately 260,000 and is situated in a largely rural and coastal area in the Southwest peninsula and offers a great place to live, work and play. Often described as a Northern City on the Coast, the Plymouth Fairness Commission report describes Plymouth as a “Tale of Two Cities” which reflects a compact city with areas of deprivation largely to the west and more affluent communities in the east of the city. Plymouth is a relatively compact city, surrounded by water on one side Dartmoor on the other.
The City Vision refers to everyone enjoying an outstanding quality of life; this requires the reduction of inequalities, improvements in health and wellbeing and a focus on prevention and early intervention. Our goal is to reduce health inequalities through impacting on health and on the social, economic and environmental determinants of health.
Much of our work relates to the tackling the wider determinants, and we influence health and wellbeing through working in partnership to:
- create healthy environments and places where our population live, work, go to school
- support our communities to be connected, empowered and supported for their health and well-being
- support improvements in access and quality of services across the city
- commission public health services
- protect the public from harm
Our systems leadership approach, and being a Unitary Authority, means that we have the opportunity and ability to influence the full workings of a city working with the corporate leadership team, the Leader of the Council, the Cabinet and wider elected members.
The ODPH combines a number of service areas of public health, public protection, community empowerment, Health determinants research collaboration (HDRC) bereavement services; registration and coroners, thereby offering Speciality Registrars opportunities to work not just within the public health team but also with teams which have statutory public protection functions such as environmental health, emergency planning; with communities and VCSE partners through our community empowerment programmes and with academic partners. The directorate is led by Professor Steve Maddern, as the statutory Director of Public Health (DPH), who sits alongside other statutory corporate directors and is accountable to the Chief Executive and the Council Leader. The public health team itself is a multi-disciplinary public health team with team members coming from diverse backgrounds, who work across the three domains of public health.
Addressing inequalities in Plymouth is a key priority for the City and in November 2024 Thrive Plymouth was re-launched, into its second decade and provides a key vehicle for connecting the whole systems activity for public health inequalities over the next ten years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy4JvNfYxhk
Another key component of Plymouth’s strategic intent is integration. Central to this approach is co-operative commissioning, where services are designed around the needs of residents and they are involved in this process of commissioning and service delivery. This has enabled public health to broaden its influence and pursue new models of integrated support for people, such as the co-creation of Wellbeing Hubs which utilise the community and voluntary sector to support people as well as offering social prescribing. The public health team is co-located with the Council commissioning teams and there are excellent opportunities for public health trainees to support and give advice and to strategic population and needs led commissioning.
Recognising the importance of the wider determinants of health and the contribution to these made across the Local Authority, the public health team also provides named links into the other Plymouth City Council directorates, enabling the public health team to work in partnership with planning, housing, leisure, education, social care, policy and performance to name but a few and creates a broad range of training opportunities.
As well as partners within Plymouth City Council, excellent working relationships are in place with a range of partner organisations, including:
- NHS Devon
- University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust is a large teaching hospital and regional centre
- Livewell SW- social enterprise providing integrated health and social care services
- The Police, Fire and Ambulance services
- Plymouth University, University of St. Mark and St. John and City College for teaching and research opportunities
- A vibrant voluntary and community sector in the City with which to engage – some of whom are providers of commissioned public health services
- UK Health Security Agency
- Office for Health Improvement and Disparities
- NHS England
The public health team is committed to training and professional development for the team itself, public health trainees and those from other health services training schemes, Examples include supporting public health practitioners to undertake academic learning via a Masters in Public Health programme, acting as a host training location for training of Foundation Doctors; GPs; Other medical speciality registrars; health information specialists, alongside training of medical and healthcare students within our universities.
We are a friendly and committed team working in a city of great natural beauty, with a high ambition to address the health and wellbeing challenges found within the city. There is plenty of public health to do and learn in Plymouth, and therefore we can offer a substantial public health training location. But don’t just take our word for it! This is what has been said of us . . .
“The Public Health team and local authority colleagues are incredibly supportive and accommodating of trainees.”
"I certainly felt as though I was a permanent member of the team during my time there."
“Every member of the Public Health team contributed to my learning in some way.”
We look forward to welcoming you to Plymouth – Britain’s Ocean City. There are 52 Plymouth’s across the world, but there is only one original…
Key Contacts
For further information, please contact:
Kamal Patel, Specialty Tutor (kamal.patel@plymouth.gov.uk)
Further information
Thrive Plymouth | PLYMOUTH.GOV.UK
http://www.visitplymouth.co.uk
https://www.plymouth.gov.uk/plymouth-plan
Our contact details:
The Office of the Director of Public Health
Plymouth City Council
Crownhill Court
Tailyour Road
Plymouth
PL6 5DH
Tel: 01752 398606
This page was last updated January 2025