Congress report - European Health Forum Gastein

Forum I: Health in other Policies and Sectors
Forum I: Health in other Policies and
Sectors
Bridging the Gap from Policy to Practice and Awareness
John Bowis
My theme is partnership and how to work together to take account of the impact of other
policies on health – not just the damage that such policies can do to health but the positive
contribution they can make. And by policy I mean the plans and actions of governments,
councils, employers, communities and, indeed, individuals.
When I was a national MP we had a disastrous rail crash in my constituency. What was
impressive that morning was the cooperation of all the agencies to deal with the crisis.
Medical teams alongside fire, police and local council personnel and all the back up from
canteens to blood transfusion services. They were all working for health – after considerable
forward planning – yet the headlines were all about transport. I doubt if many transport
officials that day realised they were involved in health activity.
In Paris at the IUHPE conference this summer I recalled visiting in my London Constituency
an elderly lady sitting watching television with the sound off.
I asked her why and she said she was rather deaf and could not hear the sound. Could I ask
someone to see if she could get a better hearing aid, I asked her.
Oh no, that was not the problem, she said. A very nice lady had called and arranged for her
to have a hearing aid but the problem was she could not manipulate the volume control on
it with her arthritic fingers.
One person with two disability problems.
Neither resolved because the two agencies concerned had not had the nous to talk to each
other.
Another day another constituent.
He was suffering from depression, living in a modern sheltered flat. He had previously lived
in very poor housing on a run-down estate but, he said, he had been happy there.
He knew people; he knew the neighbourhood and every Saturday night he played the piano
in his local pub.
Now he had been moved by well-meaning housing officers to a lovely flat but where the
rules did not allow him to practice his piano.
So he sat there, his fingers growing stiff and his life made miserable.
Two examples from my own experience of services not talking to each other and the system
not being flexible enough to provide the seamless care a person with health or disability
problems needs.
Nor is it just services that need to work better together.
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