Introduction

Across the UK, there are more than 1.6 million visits to a community pharmacy every day, providing significant opportunities to make every contact count for individual health, as well as the health of the population the pharmacy serves. 

All four UK nations have national policies on population and public health including: 

• The NHS Long Term Plan (England) (2019) 
• Public Health Priorities for Scotland (2018) 
• Making Life Better – a whole system framework for public health (2013-23) and Health and Wellbeing 2026: Delivering Together (Northern Ireland) 
• A Healthier Wales: long term plan for health and social care (Wales). 

Pharmacy professionals need a good understanding of the needs and challenges facing their local populations and the important contributions that they can make to help address health inequalities. 

Structures in public health

Each of the four UK nations has its own unique structures for delivering public health. Actions to improve public and population health effectively need to be taken at three levels:

1. National (e.g. National Public Health Institute, Ministry of Health)
2. Regional (e.g. integrated care system or health boards)
3. Local (e.g. individual cities, towns and neighbourhoods, PCNs).  

Pharmacy has an important role to play across all three domains of public health, which include: 

• Health improvement including people’s lifestyles as well as inequalities in health and the wider social influences of health
• Health protection including infectious/communicable diseases; environmental hazards, chemical, radiation, and nuclear threats; occupational health; and emergency preparedness
• Health service delivery and quality (healthcare public health) including service planning, efficiency, audit and evaluation.