Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 15 November 2018 to Question 188044 on Preventive Medicine, (a) what the definition of community services is and (b) which prevention interventions are covered.

As set out in the Secretary of State’s recent ‘Prevention is better than cure’ vision paper, community health services are key to delivering effective preventative care.

Community health services are physical health services delivered outside of acute hospitals usually in patients’ homes, clinics, community hospitals, schools and care homes. They are delivered by a range of health professionals including nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists. They deliver care through all stages of people’s lives. This ranges from health visitors keeping children under five healthy, physiotherapists helping patients regain movement and function, to nurses managing patients over 65 with co-morbidities to enable them to be treated as close to home as possible. They can improve people’s mental and physical health simultaneously by providing treatment based around outcomes important to individuals.

Community health services deliver a broad range of preventative interventions including activities to prevent falls; to manage long term conditions such as diabetes to prevent complications such as blindness and amputations; and to help with weight management.