Choosing Health

Choosing Health: making healthy choices easier is the UK's Public Health White Paper. It was published by the Government in 2004.

White Papers are official documents outlining Government policy on particular issues.

Choosing Health focuses on increasing healthy behaviour. It looks at how people can be supported to make healthier and more informed choices about their health.

It also signals the Government's intention to transform the NHS into a service for improving health, not just a service to treat sickness.

Priorities
What does this mean for Leeds?
Local campaigns

Priorities  Back to top

Six key priorities are identified in Choosing Health:

• Tackling health inequalities
• Reducing the number of people who smoke
• Tackling obesity
• Encouraging and supporting sensible drinking
• Improving sexual health
• Improving mental health and wellbeing

What does this mean for Leeds?  Back to top

As part of the Healthy Leeds Partnership and other local initiatives, we are currently helping to develop a series of Strategies for promoting and improving health in Leeds. These take the Choosing Health priorities into account, and include a Food Strategy, a Childhood Obesity Strategy and a Tobacco Control Strategy.

Local campaigns  Back to top

You may have noticed that your local pharmacist is running public health campaigns. All pharmacists must now run six campaigns a year, as part of their contract, and in Leeds the campaign topics have been chosen with Choosing Health in mind. The aim is to help raise awareness of these important issues.

The current campaigns are as follows:

Smoking	Mar-Apr 2006	Campaign leaflet
Obesity	May-Jun 2006	Campaign leaflet
Sexual Health	Jul-Aug 2006	Campaign leaflet
Alcohol	Sep-Oct 2006	Campaign leaflet
Immunisations	Nov-Dec 2006	Campaign leaflet
Heart disease, strokes and cancer	Jan-Feb 2007